Zerkalnye voyny. Otrazhenie pervoe

I do not usually take the time to write reviews, but I had to say something about this movie. This was a B movie trying to be more - which it could have been. I watched it because it had two of my faves - Malcolm McDowell and Rutger Hauer. I ask them why such good actors, especially Malcolm, would degrade themselves by being in this movie. The story is just so-so. It could have been a good story but it had some major inconsistencies and illogics that made the story look stupid (in some parts). The photography was decent. And the action wasn't too bad. What made it a B movie was the despicable dub-in. Did they hire bums off the street to do this? Most of the voices sounded like robots. No life. The one doing the the voice for the American girl was very obviously Russian. If they hired two well known American actors for the movie, why couldn't they hire an American to dub in for an American character? Very unprofessional. These Russian film makers need to go back to film school. And probably marketing school too. If they invested money to hire American actors to sell their movie - which they obviously did - they wasted their money because the above unprofessionalism negated what they did right. The fact that I voted as high as 5 shows how much they blew it, because with just a bit more effort and professionalism they could have had a much better product.

OK, this isn't the best movie I've ever seen regarding military aviation but it is worth watching once. There are some nice flying sections and a battle that is reasonable to watch. There is a plot and some sub plots going on which are somewhat entertaining.

If you sat through Fire Birds, just shut off the same part of your brain and you'll enjoy this, at least you don't have to deal with the Jones/Cage macho personality battle.

To me, the Sukhoi flying footage alone is worth watching a few times. Given the price you can get the DVD for, it is worth adding to a collection of military aircraft films. How much you like it will depend on what you are looking for in a film.

I wasn't expecting much out of the film, but they do tout lots of impressive live action air scenes, which sounded appealing to me. And in truth, there are some. But most are simply stuff you'd find in an air show, I was expecting more in the way of dogfights. There is a dogfight eventually, but it consists of 2 CGI F-15s shooting 3 CGI missiles at the plane, and the plane "dodging" them.

Basically, the highlight is a live action air scenes is maneuver called a "Cobra", where the plane sort of rears back on its tail in a controlled manner. Which is neat, but not the sort of thing that wows people who don't understand what the maneuver is (though I guess is probably very popular in Russia, since I believe they invented it). The most impressive action scene is not in the air, but a battle on an air base, between Russian special forces (I think) and terrorists.

Anyway, the plot of this is a little hard to follow. There's a super secret new Russian plane (actually just a SU-30, a nice enough plane, but nothing special). And terrorists are trying to do something to the pilots. Then we find out that it's Malcom McDowell who is the terrorist, and ex-CIA agent, with Armad Assante being a current CIA agent trying to stop him (or something). Rutger Hauer is technically in this, but he's in two scenes. And just what he is, I wasn't sure.

The trouble is, it's long. A lot of the story focuses on the "good" pilot, who isn't a jerk like the others. We see him fall in love with an American animal rights person (?) who looks 100% Russian (pretty, but doesn't even remotely look American), then he has some angst with his father (who is the designer of the plane, I think), and the antics of the other pilots. That stuff should have been trimmed out. And much of the spy stuff is boring. You have Malcom McDowell vs Armand Assante's team of CIA (I think) along with a Russian duo (who are likable, but not overly competent). They play a cat and mouse game, but it's hard to know what exactly is going on.

It does suffer from a bad English dubbing, but there are worse. Much much worse. It's passable. The real problem is all the dull scenes. Cut it out and it would have been a good movie. As is, it's worth a watch, but not great.

this movie isn't my cup of tea.i couldn't watch it all,since i lost interest,but form what i saw,it just wasn't good.i just found it boring,with pretty bad acting,and a plot that is all over the place.it's a Russian made movie,the second i have seen now.the first one being Nightwatch.i didn't like that movie either.it also has a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense,at least in my opinion.anyway,Mirror Wars starts off promising enough,with some scenes of jet fighters doing maneuvers,which look pretty impressive.after that though,it's not so good.i wouldn't recommend it myself,but if you liked Nghtwatch,you might like this movie.for me,Mirror Wars is a 3/10

One of the most boring movies I've ever seen. Simply a low-budget movie with too much talking and less action. Most actors act poor, not convincing and with fake emotions. The movie is all about a 'high-tech stealth fighter' so I expected to see one. But no, they simply used a conventional Russian plane and didn't make a single change for the movie. In the movie itself they justify it by saying something like 'it's not the shape what matters, but the materials it's made off'. I'm sure they have a good reason to use as much as Russian actors cos after all, the story takes place in Russia. But I'm sorry to say, they're acting is bad, fake and not convincing.