Forbidden Empire (2014)

Best movie ever!

An Exercise In Nonsense

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

This is an odd Russian fantasy film with mediocre translations and lack of a decent soundtrack. Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) is an inventor and master cartographer. Caught in a compromising position, he leaves London and maps Europe with his wanderings taking him to a small superstitious village haunted by a 7 horned Viy creature and who knows what else. Here he learns their secrets and is drawn into their issues.The production might be a horror fantasy for tweens. The cinematography was decent and the plot interesting as the film makers did everything they could to make it dull. The dialogue lacked zip. It needed to drop clues. The soundtrack needed to be some of that black Russian folk death metal or whatever they classify it. What was with the bad Mohawk comb overs? Did they really wear their hair that way? I did like the CG special effects.Guide: No f-bombs. Implied sex. Distant nudity?

Just in case you didn't know (like me), this is sort of a remake of a 1967 movie. Though as some have stated here and on other places, it's not really a remake or people shouldn't expect it to be one. Whatever the case, this has pretty good special effects in it. The acting on the other hand is hard to rate.Why is that? While watching (in English in this case), you might realize that something is off with some of the actors. I can only assume, but most of them either couldn't speak English or their English was so bad, they had to be synced. And that is very apparent in many scenes. Obviously Jason Flemyng does not have that issue. And if you are a fan of Fantasy Fiction, you will still sort of love this. But there are things that just don't work or are too convoluted ...

The other day, I decided to be with my people (in their collective hell), and watch this je ne sais quoi. What to say here. They can't write, for they're basically illiterate, and they can't act, for the mugs of the "Moscow theaters actors" (tm) are too well-fed. Everyone speaks in those pumped-up husky voices that are expected to mean passion from females, and courage with the other kind. For me, personally, though, they signify only people sitting on their potties trying very hard to give birth to something immortal, needles first.The cinematographers seem to have learned shooting eye-pleasing pics, though they say it's not very hard to do, these days. They have also learned how to steal nice-looking stills for our desktops from others. Although, it seems that all visuals were created not by Russians but by Czechs, Germans and whom not, so maybe I should take this last statement back. You know, it's all like giving bright neon building blocks to an idiot child—he would definitely build something with them, and it would certainly catch the eye yet it would be utterly meaningless. For there is absolutely no logic in the plot, and the montage of those nice-looking pictures, there's no even the Hollywood logic in it. The sense is totally absent from this product, like lip-sync (for all actors were dubbed like in a bad TV production).All PR effort (and the Wiki article) only confirm that the movie was targeted at brainless idiots who salivate from Photoshopped landscapes, and fast-changing camera angles. Also, xenophobia detected: the film creators seem to convey a very simple idea that all the worst in humans comes from within, and as the most humans in the film are, obviously, the Ukrainians, they look like the evil incarnate. On the other hand, Nicholas Gogol apparently thought so, too, although he didn't like all people, not only the Jews.A slight anti-clerical pathos makes a welcome respite from all this stupidity but the creators apparently didn't dwell on this. Judging from what and how they speak in the promo documentary, they have no dwelling place in their brains. Their aim was "to catch up and overrun," like Khrushchev used to say, and "to produce the movie with the highest, globally accepted standards of intiteiment" (I kid you not, this is the word they use on a dumb card in the promo film; and I just love this provincially soviet demagoguery).But the theme of rebooting classics is rich, no arguing about it. They now are free to re-shoot The Petty Demon, for example, creating the small dusty monster there with the multifaceted LED eyes, like what they did here. It will give much pleasure to the young and broad audience, no doubt.

I did not like this film. The plot is week. 3D effects are fine, but they can not improve the overall impression. The plot of original Russian film "Viy" (1967) was is fully distorted. The original film was really scarring. The new film has nothing common with Gogol's great book. It should have another title, not "Viy". Ukrainian men are shown as stupid and permanently drunk people. Ukrainian women are also shown as silly witches. But the hero of the film is an English scientist. The general idea is that Ukainian (and Russian) people can do nothing without help of Europe. The is no truth in the film. Even more, it is harmful and anti-patriotic. Do not recommend it.