Prityazhenie |
Russia • 2017 • 132m •
  • Directed by: Fedor Bondarchuk. • Starring: Irina Starshenbaum, Alexander Petrov, Rinal Mukhametov, Oleg Menshikov, Sergey Garmash, Lyudmila Maksakova, Evgeniy Mikheev, Nikita Kukushkin, Evgeniy Sangadzhiev, Aleksey Maslodudov, Darya Rudenok, Anton Shpinkov, Evgeniy Koryakovskiy. • Music by: Ivan Burlyaev.     An alien spaceship, following an accident in space, enters the earth atmosphere and being damaged by Russian fighter jets, crash lands in a populated area of Moscow taking a few hundred human lives in the crash. A school girl saves the life of one of the aliens and together must deal with humans who intend them harm.
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So why do the UFOs crash and land in the United States only? Russia deserves an alien encounter as well! That was probably the rationale behind the idea of making Attraction: if Americans do that then we must do the same, with blackjack and hookers. Especially since our president once proudly said that Russian hookers are the best in the world, so whatever clichés and stereotypes exist in the genre of close encounters, we must use, overuse and abuse them all. Just to show the damn yankees that Russia can kick ass too!
And so the show commences. Army, navy and the air force - lights, camera, action! If Michael Bay has turned Transformers into a propaganda flick for the US military then we definitely have to repeat that grand move! And where our real military doesn't look as glorious, organized and well-equipped, we'll make up for it with CGI and bravado. Although even that didn't help concealing the heap of black smoke from the pipes of our only aircraft carrier - which will spend the next several years in renovation that costs almost $1bln. Looks like Mr Bay did that part better. Well, we'll fix it next time by throwing in even more money out of our shrinking budget and waning reserves.
Then we needed to show that our emergency services are ready to oppose any kind of cataclysm, saving the lives of civilians and stuff. But when our real hospitals look like peeling shacks with leaking roofs, nonexistent equipment and personnel angry because their salaries are barely enough to survive - well, let's draw up a pretty picture and take several shots inside some modern-looking facility (which is probably not even a real hospital). America's been humiliated again - check!
And of course we absolutely needed to demonstrate the adamant resolve of our brilliant government, to show the potential foes that the country would not crumble under any sort of attack, and that the people would stand united to support their leaders. But when there's no true leadership to be found, and when the filmmakers are so afraid to make even a fictional assumption that the country could be ruled by anyone but Mr Putin - and Mr Putin hasn't graced the production with the participation of His Majesty - then the potential interplanetary conflict has to be dealt with by a decrepit vice-minister of an unnamed ministry. But at least he has a luxurious chair and speaks with his disciples in a tone of unbent confidence. Screw the American pussies and their weak and pointless democracy - check! And mate. Import substitution complete, state grant money used up, the only thing left to do is a long list of generals and high-seating government officials in the closing credits, under the "Thanks" section.
What? It's actually not enough for a film to do just that?! You actually need a decent plot with multi-dimensional characters the audience could sympathize with? Ahh, who cares! Just add a pack of brutes whose only way of dealing with issues is by clubbing someone with a baseball bat. Add a bitchy chick who's 25 years old but plays a schoolgirl and behaves as if her big brass daddy has never taught her anything but arrogance, stupidity and an inherent sense of superiority towards every single human being. Add an awkward erudite nerd who is supposed to be smart but instead always babbles some nonsense while dreaming about our school queen. And, if that's not enough, polish the whole picture with a conveniently anthropomorphic alien and a Starman-like romantic line. Ugh...
Did the filmmakers really believe they were doing a stellar job here? Considering Fedor Bondarchuk's previous work, Obitaemy Ostrov, which took the now-classic book of the Soviet fantast writers Strugatsky brothers and turned it into a kind of Rambo on a remote planet, I think they are more than happy with themselves. Because Attraction could be viewed as Obitaemy Ostrov inside out. That film was about a smiling super-powered guy from Earth of the future who was put within a backward and brainwashed society on a different planet (which (un)surprisingly resembles Earth of today). And Attraction is a way to see ourselves as that barbaric and deranged world without any metaphors, however straightforward. Bondarchuk's probably thinking that he's a genius for pulling off that 'neat' reversal of the roles.
But even if that revelation was indeed supposed to be an insightful way of showing us our own flaws, the film has achieved a total opposite of that. Instead of showing Russia blinded by the political ambitions of its leader and abusing its military and diplomatic powers to cause atrocities around the globe, it has given us a prettified picture of an almighty war machine guided by all-wise guys, while hinting rather transparently that the only thing democratic processes are able to produce is havoc and mass destruction done with the hands of crazed grunts manipulated by their corrupt and power-hungry street leaders. There's no true reflection or self-awareness here. So even if the film did try to be something more than an expensive propaganda flick for the modern Russia, all its attempts resulted in simply even more propaganda. Oh well, who cares, at least there's cool CGI and fight scenes here. As for a real talent or a true and meaningful message, looks like that the state grant money can't buy.
Review by Semisonic from the Internet Movie Database.
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