Is there anything more to this 1812 Overture of a movie than pomp and glitz?
Fingers on triggers, a detachment of troops lie in wait at the edge of the forest. They sense something is about to happen. Then there is a rumbling sound growing ever louder. Then, from out of the trees, comes a mass of marauding bears. The soldiers open fire at the possessed animals, but still they come….
Every so often the Russian Federation knocks out an ambitious and lavish screen production like Daywatch (2006) or Dark Planet (2008) to impress the world with.
The science fiction action thriller AVANPOST – its Western title is The Blackout – is fresh from that same assembly line. Trumpeted by electronic billboards all over Moscow, this grandiose epic arrives after having been in gestation for several years and is being shipped out to cinemas in the Baltic and also Austria and Germany.
AVANPOST , a product of 123 Productions, TNT Premier and TV3 – represents another collaboration between television and cinema in the manner of the recent Gogol franchise (2017 – 2018). Indeed the cinematographer behind this also worked on those Gogol movies. As we shall see, however, AVANPOST is far removed from the whimsical nature of that franchise.
The thirty-eight year old Muscovite Ilya Kulikov, who scripted The Envelope (2017) wielded the pen here and the 31 year old Ekaterinburg born Yegor Baranov directed this . He has form on such ambitious projects: he was responsible for `Russia’s first erotic thriller` – Sanchara (Locust) (2103). He too was involved in the Gogol series.
There are some established names in the cast list as well. The 37-year-old Pyotr Federov (Ledokol, 2016) forms one of the main leads as does Alexei Chadov (Dark Planet).
Mood music plays a conspicuous role in this motion picture. Ryan Otter’s majestic and doomy style of composition, evident in Abigail (2019) fits the bill here. Also though, none other than Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda has recorded a song – `Fine` – just for the film.
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Entrapment.
The action occurs about fifteen years hence and in the capital of Russia. Drone like vehicles light up the city sky, people consult transparent cell phones and holographic displays are all over the place. Otherwise life goes on much as before.
We are introduced to the men and women who are to be the protagonists, including a businessman and a taxi driver – before the cataclysm turns everyone’s life upside down.
Without warning, planes drop from the skies as the lights go out plunging much of the world into darkness and vast swathes of humanity perish without any known cause.
One of the areas left unaffected consists of a large part of Moscow. Here life seems to continue unabated (who needs imports?) although the Muslim community has become strident.
Everyday life has become brutalised too. In one gratuitous sequence, one of our heroes stabs a man in the hand with a small ice breaker from the bar of a nightclub for getting a bit persistent with a woman at a nightclub. Later, after this man has followed the couple outside, their taxi driver obliges by shooting him in the leg twice.
The crucial change, however, is that a military detachment has been set up to monitor the outskirts of the – as they call it – `circle of life`. Both men and women of a certain age are conscripted into this.
The rest of the story concerns the predicament and exploits of these soldiers. Much of the action henceforth consists of them togged up and carrying guns with lazer sights, en masse beneath a leaden sky or at night, battling with an invisible foe in the manner of Predator(1987) – which is name checked in the dialogue.
It is when the villains – they are interstellar interlopers – show themselves that the credibility that the film had so far tried so hard to build up begins to crack.
The aliens- Lord Voldermort lookalikes – prove both unoriginal and a little silly. They communicate via mind transference and also have the ability to mess with our perceptions. They can make us imagine that our long-lost fathers are paying us a visit when what is really there is a nonplussed cop. This way they set hordes of zombified people up against the valiant men and women in uniform, who then have to gun down the former in cold blood. It is all a bit like a cross between Skyline (2016) and World War Z (2013).
Of course there are added subtleties to the plot. The aliens seem to contain factions within their population and the Outpost leaders make an alliance with one of them. (A situation reminiscent of the Gene Roddenberry inspired Canadian T V show Earth Final Conflict from the Nineties).
The entry of the alien’s mothership – a rickety almost steampunkish affair – into Moscow airspace reminds us that there could be the makings of good science fiction somewhere in this – but it comes as the show closes.
Slick.
AVANPOST offers a glossy experience with action and plot in thrall to appearances.Even for a two and a half hour show it felt as though the canvas was too small for the ideas in it (for there were some) to be developed in full. We may have to wait for the threatened sequel or a proposed TV series for that.
I was put in mind of several cinematic forerunners, some of which I have already mentioned. The worst comparison I made, though was with Starship Troopers (1997), because it had the same militarism but lacked the irony which made that picture worthwhile.
The film may be an example of Russian `soft power`. A commentator called Daryanoff, writing a user review in the IMDB, seems to think so: `as a Russian this is a point to pride`, he says. Yet the things that mark this out as a Russian product – the paranoid sense of being encircled, for example – are the very things which will do nothing to dispel any negative stereotypes of Russians that are out there.
AVANPOST failed to charm me. I was as repelled by its cynical violence just as I came to be suspicious of its humorless machismo. The film, however, did stay with me for far longer than many a better film has done.
Featured image from: Kinopoisk.ru.
AVANPOST:International trailer (English).