A Rough Draft

Film without the slightest sense, poorly written and with an avalanche of both logical and plot holes. In general the film opens very well giving you a very good introduction that makes you empathize with the protagonist and makes you enter completely into the story, but after the beginning the film begins to decline in quality, meaning and continuity as if they had lost the desire to make the film, and in the end you wonder how it could have happened to this film to degenerate in this way.

I gave this film a chance, it took me a while to absorb the story and the theme, or the theme in general. To begin with, I have to write about the good sides of this film, and that is the theme, which is unique and has its own originality, that is actually the only good thing in this film. And now what I don't like. The actors do their work stiffly and unimpressively. The visual and audio performance is below average, some visual effects are good, but some are like watching a theater play (the moment when you know that the stone is made of cardboard in some scenes). Although the original and potentially interesting theme here is so sketchy, full of holes, inexplicable and stupid situations, almost the entire film you are lost and not in a positive way. Another major problem of this film is the duration of the film, the topic is big and there is a lot to process and process, show and explain, in this film it is all packed into a short period of time and in a hurry, and that is never good. Sometimes it's sad when someone discovers something new, something original and of great potential, and then it's not shown properly on the screen to the viewer.

I like the story-

Kirill (Nikita Volkov) returns home after a work celebration to find someone else living in his apartment. Soon he finds that no one remembers him- Not even the government! He discovers he has been chosen to be a customs agent, a person who can open doors to other worlds.

This movie feels like a rough draft. There was so much touched upon and and crammed into this movie. It would have done well to expand some parts of the storyline. The romance between Kirill and Anna had no depth or resolution. Although there were a few touching moments they weren't long enough to let you care.

Since this was an English dubbed film I must say the voice actors were mediocre. There was a part in the beginning where an actor is speaking and you only hear Kirill reply. Emotion is not always relayed and it takes away from the actors' intention.

There were a couple of neat little action scenes, some special effects and glimpses of other worlds. Scenes with Kirill and Kotya seemed natural.

This has at least inspired me to find the books and have a read.

The main character starts off doing well but things start to go a bit wrong as the plot develops. From the start, a Sci-Fi film is revealed.

There's an annoying blonde in the film who is integral to the story, acting like a nemesis to the main character. She's fairly wooden in acting ability but also needed to counter the 'hero'.

The first half of the film is damn good. Has some decent action, visual effects and a good sense of direction. If the film had stayed on this course, it could've quite easily scored 8 or more as it really entertains.

However, the second part of the film is just odd, muddled, and let's the film down. The point of the plot, characters, etc, are just thrown away. Yes there are more action scenes but they seem to be sprinkled into the film at random.

Overall, this isn't a stinker as many other reviews seem to point out, but it does suffer from a weak second half.

As a big fan of Lukjanenko, the author of the book and the book itself, I so wished the movie would be any good. But unfortunately it isn't. And I am very sad to give this review

First of all I would like to thank the author for a great story. For some reasons this book puts me in a special mental state, so I have listened to an audio version of it more than enough to know the story by heart.

Now about the movie. My major complain goes to the screenwriter. Almost all story lines and characters, including the main ones were changed so heavily, that the whole thing stopped to make any sense after the first 30 minutes of the movie. I probably said "whaat the hell??" 100 times watching the movie. Somehow, to my regret, bad screenwriting became an epidemic in the russian movie industry. It's like they think that if they add some visual effects to the movie, they are justified to make a sloppy work on the story, which is what a good movie is actually always about. Common guys, that is just a lazy thinking!

Ok, you might say that I am biased by the book and it's always difficult to convert a book to a movie. So what if you haven't read the book? To that I would say - it will be even worse to watch, because you will just fail to understand what the hell is going on. Characters suddenly start talking about things and calling names you've never heard before. In my opinion you will not understand motivations and the logic, so you will be left to sit and wonder who is doing what and why.

My advise - skip the movie, read or listen the book.