Rating: C-
Dir: Dmitriy Grachev
Star: Evgeniy Mironov, Anya Chipovskaya, Vinnie Jones, Nikita Panfilov
a.k.a. Vychislitel
Yeah, you might want to read that cast list again. You’ll probably be singing, “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong.” What is a former Wimbledon defender and part of the Guy Ritchie repertory company, doing in a Russian sci-fi film? Good question. No clue. I did wonder if the makers might take the same approach as for his role in 2011’s Kazakhstani film, Liquidator; there, he played a mute hitman. Nope, here, Jones speaks! Albeit obviously dubbed into Russian – though it’s done well enough, I wondered if he had perhaps been given his lines phonetically. Not that this is a particularly dialogue-heavy part. Mostly yelling, to be honest.
He plays Yust Van Borg, one of a group of ten criminals on the planet XT-59. It’s a strictly regulated society, where there is basically one punishment: exile from the city which represents the sole oasis of civilization. Also in the group getting kicked out are Ervin Kann (Mironov) and Kristina Schulz (Chipovskaya). They form an uneasy alliance, and split off from the rest of the group, dominated by Yust. The aim is to head across the wilderness for three hundred kilometers to the semi-mythical – and possibly entirely mythical – Islands of Happiness. There, they can live out the rest of their lives. Maybe. In any case, getting there is a problem, since everything in the wilderness is trying to kill them.
Complicating matters further, is Ervin’s former role as an advisor to the President. Initially, the plan is for him to die out there, and certain other members of the group have been promised pardons if they kill him. But, whoops! All of a sudden, he needs to be recovered alive, with Matias (Panfilov) sent out from the city to retrieve him. Unfortunately, the socio-political stuff is about the least interesting thing the film has to offer. This brings things to a grinding halt, for backstory and social commentary. It’s more fun being a simple survival movie. This contrasts Ervin’s smarts – hence, the name of the film, about which you might have been wondering – against the blunt object approach of Yust.
It does feel disjointed, almost as if there are scenes missing. At one point early on, Yust and Ervin face off. Only, instead of the expected fight, it cuts to Ervin and Kristina, marching through the terrain. I dunno. I will say, it looks solid, with Iceland providing a suitably barren and alien-looking landscape. The effects are good enough too: the threats are mostly plant-based, which are likely easier to animate with CGI. However, the movie struggles to sustain momentum, feeling as if it is more interested in providing a metaphor for totalitarian society, than the exciting spectacle of an extraterrestrial wilderness I wanted to watch. Not everything has to aspire to be Dune, y’know. Sometimes, it is perfectly fine for a movie to want to be Pitch Black.