Rating: D
Dir: Andrey Simonov
Star: Kirill Komarov, Natalya Skomorokhova, Roman Kurtsyn, Arina Postnikova
a.k.a. Bolevoy porog
Here’s a suggestion. Maybe don’t introduce us to your lead characters by having them act like complete assholes in the very first scene. Yet this is how we meet Sergei (Komarov) and his three friends: leading the police on a joyride through the streets of Moscow, while live-streaming it on the ‘gram [this being Russia, probably Tele- rather than Insta-]. I already hate them. It ends in the inevitable crash, and they are “recommended” to get out of town for a bit. This takes the quartet to the very scenic wilderness of Gorny Altai, for a white-water rafting trip. Those who have seen Deliverance, will know there’s no possible way this could go wrong.
Oh, who am I trying to kid. After a slew of cringe-inducingly awkward banter, including a marriage proposal, they lose their dinghies through rank incompetence, and encounter another group by the remote river. This lot happen to be escaped convicts, and things go from predictably bad to obviously worse. The very scenic wilderness becomes a backdrop against which the two groups chase each other, capturing, escaping, threatening and bickering. So much bickering. On both sides, with it being absolutely no surprise when the “nicest” of the felons decides to switch sides. For surprise would require some degree of interest, and that was dead on arrival here. I had precisely zero investment in whether anyone survived, and was probably on Team Criminal for much of this: they didn’t care about the lack of cell signal.
Matters were certainly not helped by the presentation, with an excruciatingly bad dubbed version. If I’d realized this in advance, I probably would not have bothered. It feels as if the words were chosen to match the lip movements, regardless of whether or not they made sense. “Cabbage hovercraft wombat? Margaritas on coconut barstools,” is not much of an exaggeration. Not improving things: the dubbing artists chosen for the two women’s voices are like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. Especially Sergei’s girlfriend, whose name I missed, but whose dialogue seems to consist of shrieking “Sergei!” every second line. This comes to a head when the couple encounter some locals, who want absolutely nothing to do with them. I switched allegiance to #TeamLocal.
The sole positive here is Andrey Iosifov’s cinematography, which makes the region, over near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan, look almost implausibly attractive (top, unencumbered by any people). It’s a wild, untamed region of mountains, forests and rivers, possessing a majesty quite at odds with the banal plotting and uninteresting characters. I hope the Gorny Altai area finds a new agent, and goes on to a long, successful career on its own. It deserves to be showcased in a better vehicle than this. It was only at the end, I realized the title of this probably applies to the viewer. I have definitely discovered my pain threshold in terms of Russian movies, and this was well past it.