4 (2005)

Good concept, poorly executed.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

A science fiction film that harbors few images of the new or the possible but remarks on the failures of the old. This film begins with the destruction of a street, while four large claw like machines tear the street up which makes four dogs run away from a store window with four manikins in it. Wait this movie is about the number four and how it relates to the everything and creates a common theme that everything relates to...right? If this movie was the movie 23 then possibly, but eastern European cinema generally deals with its thriller or science fiction films in a much more mature, less contrived fashion. The movie begins with very long shots of people sitting in a bar. They continue to fabricate elaborate stories of themselves to contradict the otherwise miserable banal existence the world outside has created for them. We see the lives of three individuals(not four) deal with their pasts, in which they tried very hard to conceal. Their past like much of this movie remains an enigma. We see these individuals move in and out their bizarre universes of government conspiracies, rustic women communes and unruly meat packing plants. Personally this film contains some of the most bizarre images in any film I have viewed. The composition of the shots explores a cautionary tale of the old Soviet era world decaying around the lives of the people who have bought into a very idealistic way of living.

I'm starting to think that there's a conspiracy, all right: one that involves a wallop of money paid to those who have access to published columns in newspapers and film and art magazines to ensure that this or that film, despite its obscurity, will reach a higher status via a ratings point which will tag it with a "universal acclaim" or something within that range, thus ensuring unsuspecting folk (like me) will wander into theatres or rent the bloody thing, expecting a surprise, only to find myself racing to the bathroom to upchuck.This movie is one of them. It has definitely make me bypass any and every posted article I come across because it's rather clear that two things might have happened: either I didn't get the message that is so hidden beneath this film's inner realms as to be impossible to access, or they and I watched two entirely different movies that happen to share the same name. 4 is a dirty trick on the audience. It's no wonder that it appeared and disappeared faster than you can say "smorsgabord" and that despite the rating it got on Metacritic, no one had heard of it. It's terrible with sugar on top.Firstly, there is the ever-present number four from start to finish. While having a little symbolism here and there is okay, and it's been done with various degrees of success in many well-known movies, this movie is panting with it. Four dogs at the start of the movie, looking at the camera in a heretofore empty street when suddenly, machinery drops onto the foreground and proceeds to rip open the asphalt. Four people in a bar, although one of them is a non-entity. Three of them go their separate ways but are linked nevertheless, not only to each other but to what their lives are not. While this concept may work, the movie meanders so much -- particularly with the story of the would-be model played by Marina Vovchenko which goes into the territory of the extremely bizarre, and not in a good way -- that the initial theme gets lost in translation. Or maybe, like I said before, I just "didn't get it." The problem also lies in that so much time is spent on Marina's story (which revolves on the death of her sister, from bread-chewing, no less, and the subsequent, shrill mourning which follows) that any interest in the inherent Surrealism dissipates without a trace. So what if the same horrifying tales that the three strangers interchanged in a bar seem to have a truth of their own? The director doesn't invest much time in truly tying them together, or weaving a tighter story that could, in a David Lynchian way, intersect either with the past-present, or within alternate dimensions, or even as a straightforward, mundane science-fiction story. This is an uphill battle against an insurmountable wall that only a saint (or someone into the weird for weird's sake) could endure.

Visually stunning, but that's pretty much all it has going for it. This Russian did hold my interest for about an hour. I'd definitely never seen anything like it. But at about that point I realized it wasn't going to go anywhere. It's perfectly satisfied with being weird for weirdness' sake. There is no coherent narrative. I probably would have enjoyed it anyway, seeing as the visuals are quite fun. However, there are many sequences that are loud and obnoxious, and it just started driving me crazy. After I watched it, I felt like I wanted to punch the first elderly woman whom I ran into. No film should make someone feel that way.

The first hour is interesting. The second hour is pretty disturbing - Russian poverty, alcoholism, the works. Surely, not your regular Hollywood popcorn flick. Normally, such movies would have a main element or idea, around which everything would revolve. I couldn't really find it in this one. Seemed like a shocker made for the sake of making it.What was up with huge, monstrous drawn out scenes of walking in the mud? Were they really necessary? Yes, it does get pretty muddy in the country, especially if you have to walk. We get it.Well, if you really have to dig for something, there may have been some kind of a message hidden deep within. Something about people not being what they seem, or say they are. Maybe? Too bad I had to fast forward 50% of this ridiculously long movie.