The Inhabited Island (2008)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Really Surprised!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

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.

I loved this movie and I urge all to watch it! This is the biggest budget blockbuster movie Russia has produced to date and it does not disappoint. Nowadays we get so many high-budget blockbuster films - Transformers, The Day the Earth Stood Still - that have great special effects and are eye-candy visually, but offer little or no substance besides those fine visuals. This movie proves that when great computer generated special effects supplement an interesting plot and thought- provoking ideas, then you get truly great science fiction. Yes, when a movie has more dialog, more character development, more story-line, it is actually a much better movie! The plot in this movie is intricate, dynamic, and detailed. It may be hard at first to keep track of all the new characters and developments in the movie. But that is because the plot is based on a great novel by Strugatsky brothers. It is not simple, but is meant to present various well-rounded characters and ideas to the viewer. On one level you have a simple love story going on. On another level, there is a whole country in trouble.One of the great things about Strugatsky's fiction and this movie captures that is that though the outer shell of the story is fictional, there are clear allusions to the real world we live in today. This is what ultimately makes this such a powerful movie. The world of Sakarash is very much like Soviet Russia and Russia today in so many ways. The way that the power elite uses media and technology to control the masses, to make them helpless slaves is a reflection a system that is in place in our world today, some places especially.

Can't understand all this negative hysteria. Most of which is actually about nothing ("crap! oh, such a crap! totally crap!" often mentioning that Bondarchuk is a bad director). Well, I can partly understand those who admired the original book (which is really worth reading) as they may have imagined everything in different manner (this is particularly true for sci-fi adaptations). But very often I read comments of people who seemed to be negatively oriented even before they really watched the film. The movie is not piece of art. It really takes a lot from classic sci-fi movies (from costumes designs to city views). And directing sometimes is confusing. But the film has one strong point - the plot, original story that authors reflected rather well. Special effects are good (they were performed by American specialists), acting is not bad (dramatic acting usually is not required in sci-fi action movies). In essence, the movie is good and worth seeing. Don't take negative comments for granted.BTW as far as I know Boris Strugaztsky (the one of two brothers who is still alive) liked the adaptation.

In fact neither I nor my company had expected to be strongly impressed by the movie, when we joined to watch it on Saturday night. But having read the Strugatsky's plot-book, I was amazed that the director had followed the story so precisely. The only evident mistake was the premature assassination of one of the characters. Still the impression on the film is partial due to its halves shown with a 4 month break.As to fighting scenes, I estimate them as dead. There was almost NO real action. The usage of Bullet Time technology of matrix all fight long turned the action into slow and boring trash. The martial arts instructors should really be ashamed of this.There is a Russian proverb: "The first pancake is laid shapeless". It is just about the film. The spectator expected to see a miracle, because a $40million worth Russian film is considered like a $400million Hollywood movie. This expectations of a common viewer were ruined. I do hope that next attempts of Russian directors and producers to catch up with Hollywood will be more successful.