recommended

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Non-science fantasy, preposterous, weak plot, amateur acting, but may be that was the intent? Cheap trash. Completely disappointing! Perfect for trash fiction lovers though.

This movie is about the human misery inequalities of ordinary people's life in Russia. It has accomplished its task with excellence, in bringing the story of the two fathers that are capable of giving their lives to protect their families, and showing how little recognition and compensations their efforts ans sacrifices achieve.It involves the jobless single mother, who is about to abandon her child in order to live with a mob leader; the father who literally kills himself for his family at a nuclear factory; the lack of people's rights, due to the denial of labor rights for the injured worker; the stupid mobster, who humiliates himself for granting a survival for his son; and so on. It also shows a double murder on the middle of a street, denouncing this way the lawlessness which is granted to powerful mobsters on Russia.The only fault is the way the two supporting mob characters are portrayed. There is a sense of humor on their roles, humor which extracts some of the drama and tension the is supplied by the main character. This way, the climax of the movie is not at the level of tragedy that it should be.

This is a grim film, done thoughtfully and with a gripping message. It speaks to the basic decency of most human beings, and the drastic measures that corrupt governments and societies force people to take for survival. I found some compelling comparisons presented in this movie. The grim and colorless lives of the well educated and basically decent nuclear power plant workers versus the posh and colorful lives of the ignorant and brutish Mob bosses. The two father's love for their sons and their desire to protect and provide for their sons. That love and the basic decency is what keeps these two men partners for that fateful day. The mother's of the sons - who are both survivors, and in many ways smarter and tougher than their men. The drastic measures that the dying man takes versus the frantic measures the thug takes. But both fail at the end because the particular low level Russian mob scene is too stupid and too myopic to see the golden egg dropped in their laps. At the end, when the two miscreants open Pandora's box and waste what they find on their own short 'lived' pleasure - is a message for the rest of us - we will kill ourselves through our ignorance.One would hope this concept was true and neophyte stealing nuclear material would have a hard time finding an actual buyer. You just can't print a sign and expect a N. Korean dictator to show up.One other thought - the scene where the thug father and his son talk about American pop culture I initially thought was the usual garbling of a foreign culture. But at the end it seemed more like an elaborate word game the two played that included American words. Just the kind of game that a father and son would play.

In 2008, this just doesn't cut it. A whole movie taking place in a foreign country, in this case in Russia, in which *everybody* are supposed to be Russians, and during the whole freaking film they're talking to each other in English, and this with a "russian" accent so thick it's at times hard to make out what the lines are. No, no, no. This is an insult in every imaginable level. In most Hollywood crap they at least have the oh-so-clever excuse to include an American hero in the mix with whom everybody thus has to communicate in English. But even then, and this in most of the movies, when amongst other fellow country-men, they speak in their respective language. In Europe they have the habit of dubbing the movies for those that wish to escape the subtitles, but it's up to the spectator to choose which version to see (or hear). Not so here. I was trying to figure out why they spoke English for a good 20 minutes into the film, telling myself that there has to be some clever reason for it, only to finally realize that it was purely out of stupidity, arrogance and probably for some unclear commercial reasoning. The problem is that after that nothing matters. This is not serious. In fact i'm thinking it's a hoax. At one point i was certain that it's a parody, a big joke for those who can get past the third grade pseudo-thriller that seemed to be playing. But even then, i didn't laugh enough for it to be a good one. No, for the most time i was just shaking my head in wonder and desolation while asking myself if i was not being laughed at by the film maker. I strongly advice against, this is just stupid. Everybody in the world do not need English speak...