GamerTab That was an excellent one.

SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Sam DeRenzis A Russian film based on the novel Prisoners of Power by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. After reading the English translation one thing is clear the film follows the book closely but not exactly.Overall I think this is one of the best films I've seen in my life. The cinematography is beautiful and the characters are very well written. Anyone interested in seeing it should love Sci-Fi because this film relies heavily on your ability to imagine a world where human beings are completely free and have begun a new age..Maxim Kammerer is the main character during the story, we get to see him as a mostly inexperienced youth. In the book he's in his early 20's but here he appears older which probably means they just couldn't find someone to fill the part who was as good an actor as Vasiliy Stepanov. As time goes on the man evolves and gains better judgement in dealing with his situation.Its very clear the film was adapted from the book because in the very beginning when he runs into the asteroid/meteors it begins diverging from the novel. Where-as the novel has him being shot down from the surface.Maxim is not an amateur space explorer but in fact is part of something called the Independent Reconnaissance Unit or IRU. He can find no direction in his life for studying anything specific so joins up around age 20 and begins charting planets from the surface/orbit. In the book its made clear this is not his first mission as his parents want him to do something else and generally everyone already knows what he does.Another divergence from the book is with the way he crashes, the film has meteors/asteroids that he runs into but we know that's unlikely because his ship would certainly have given warning since because even the most simple of radars can track a huge rock! The reason it's done this way is the backstory would've probably required around 30 mins to establish and they wanted to get right into the meat of the book instead. So how does he crash then? The IRU sent him to this planet to map it and check for life and while on approach he is shot down by weapons fire. Later on in the story this happens again to him in the plane which is when he realizes what happened to him originally.The important part is the film does succeed in capturing ones interest even with all the changes, especially the end fight between Maxim and Strannik which never really happened in the book! It was EPIC in the film but the book has them driving off in the car together after Maxim has blown the main tower center up. Then he calmly tells Maxim he's from Earth too.The book is great, the film is great. This is just like Black Lightening in that few know of it's existence outside Russia.

info-11400 Phew, what to say about this movie. There is simply too much to discuss. This is quite the impression you will get watching this film. It rushes from theme to theme, literally rushes! Let's start at the very base, a Strugatsky novel. I read a few Strugatsky stories, most notably of course "Roadside picnic". "Obitaemyy ostrov" however is not "stalker", no 10 out of 10 that is.The brothers Strugatsky were Soviet writers, so some of their stories dealt with the soviet ideal human. In "Obitaemyy ostrov" earth has made it, and no doubt, all humanity transformed into perfect (probably communist) beings. That means every human being utilizes all of his/her potential: Mentally, physically and ethically. The latter is of most importance. A perfect communist is of almost angelic moral integrity. Whatever powers he will possess or obtain, he will not use these in any selfish or abusive way.That said, our "hero" is a most beautiful, well build "Übermensch" (astonishing blond an blue eyed) from earth, with perfect integrity and morality. He is young, and unfortunately crashes on a strange planet. His spacecraft explodes, he is lost. As he is an "Übermensch", he is not desperate.In fact he is imprisoned by a totalitarian state, escapes by accident, falls in love, and the story really gets complicated from then on. Right now there are true spoilers to come. So stop reading, if you want to watch the movie unbiased.The unknown fathers reign over a city, that is (of course) a mixture of Metropolis and Blade Runner, and a little design of Dune. As the story evolves you will learn that almost everyone is controlled be rays send out by so called defense towers. These rays work at a subconscious level. Our hero is immune, as is a group of people, fought by the state as terrorists. Well the (super-)earthling becomes (in order of appearance) a prisoner, guard elite soldier, free individual and lover, terrorist, convict, runaway convict, terrorist leader, member of the establishment, revolutionary and finally earthling again. The hero is somewhat naive. He tries all these positions like a youngster without any prejudices. In the end, he knows about the foundation of the political system. The political elite of the state resembles a bit Stalin's system. The state's attorney is in trouble. That means he is about to be murdered. He tries to convince our hero to destroy the central of the ray-emitting towers and take over the power after wards. With the help of some co-convicts the hero succeeds, but destroys the central of power instead.One of the very nice and intelligent moments of the movie is the instance, where the friends of the hero take over power. And one really feels the temptation of power. Almost brilliant.One high ranking member of the government turns out to be human (thus superhuman) as well. He is furious about the actions of our young hero. The so called roamer tries to change the system since 20 years. But he tries to avoid unnecessary losses or victims. He is the man for the slow change, no revolution. The young hero is the revolutionary, simply incapable of bearing the injustice. While exchanging some intellectual backgrounds the roamer and the hero beat hell out of each other. Really strange (for super-humans) I think. And naturally, the young rebel insists on a quick change.The movie is optically splendid, albeit the cgi is about 10 years behind. They have enough budget to make things look convincing most of the time. Designwise they steal from a lot of movies.The film was more entertaining than I expected. But it has too much to tell to be really great. A lot of interesting things just rush by. Well, and the same might be true about this comment.

a a The original book is a classic in Russia, and contains enough material (and in high enough quality) to create a Start Wars-like series of films. What was done instead was extremely fast-paced bullet-point-like re-telling of the classic story. No suspense, no tension that was present at all stages in the book.The screenplay sticks to the original dialogue almost verbatim. A serious mistake in my view: the director seems to be afraid of the book fans, and doesn't dare to touch anything in the original. But the original dialogue was backed by a lot of description of internal thinking of the heroes - which cannot be shown on the screen. The result - the storyline is flat and uninteresting, instead of the intriguing and fascinating story in the book.The actors' play is a total fiasco - except, maybe Strannik ("Strider") - but his role is relatively simple. Everybody else looks like they're reading from a phone book - which probably has to do with the fact that the dialogues were left as-is, see above.I do appreciate the effort to create an "exoplanet" look of everyday things (cars, glasses, forks, plates, food, clothes etc). The things created would be unusable, but had the desired unusual look.Overall, disappointing, and leaves a taste of a missed opportunity.

jan-ptak I must say I am very surprised how good this movie is. For that particular convention (sci-fi) this movie have very good and logical plot (movie is based on Brothers Strugacki book), very good special effects and its well played. A guy crash his spaceship on a foreign planet and it is caught by some weirdo. Whole planet is govern by a military junta or something alike. It turns out that population is govern by some sort of radiation. I don't want to tell more not to spoil the story but bear in mind that Strugaccy Brothers are very famous sci-fi writers and the story had very strong points. For a long time I didn't have so much fun watching sci-fi movie (last favorite one was "Serenity"). Straight to the point - if You can - watch this movie. One comment to the cast - main male character looks like Ken. His smile got my nerves - even my wife agreed that he looks too perfect but that was for sure the director idea.