In Moscow, the priest Owen hires a team to guide him in the underworld to find his friend Sergei that is missing while researching the legend about the existence of demons and an entrance to hell beneath the city.
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It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
A friend goes looking for his missing friend in the bowls of some Russian city, He hires some guides, and they are introduced an underworld of people. The missing guy seems on the tract to some mystical discovery and the searching friends learn more about the story as the film goes on. The acting and the sets were fantastic. The description led me to believe that this was to be some sort of good vs evil confrontation. Sadly that wasn't the case, and the story morphed into ....well a pretty lame ending.On the bright side, the best thing I can say about this movie was that it only cost me $2.00 cause Block Buster is going out of business.To recap: Great acting, awesome sets, crappy ending.
This may not be the worst movie ever made, but it is absolutely the most boring. Wonder why it is shot mostly in the dark, and mostly with Vincent Gallo walking away from the camera, or looking down? Because he doesn't want to show his face for actually agreeing to being in this movie. I liked his early stuff, but the pretentiousness of the "Brown Bunny" and then being cast in this drivel knocked him down a peg in my book. And Val Kilmer? I actually want to send him a sympathy card. The "doors" to this??? Actually the casting was the only reason I watched this movie, and Val doesn't even show up until the movie is more than halfway over. Simply a sad movie.
There are good movies, and there are bad movies, and then there's Moscow Zero, a film so utterly bad it makes spending a month in solitary with an insurance salesman an attractive entertainment alternative.With an incomprehensible plot about the gates of Hell opening within a labyrinth of tunnels under Moscow, the film is a mess of repetitive and nonsensical shots of a little girl running through tunnels, red lights floating about, and strange wall shadows, none of which serves to mount any fear or tension, but instead elicits the reaction of "here they go again with the girl (or lights)" from the viewer.Directed by María Lidón, who for reasons I can only conclude as shame, was billed as Luna, the movie stars Vince Gallo as Owen, an American priest who travels to Moscow in search of Sergei (Rade Serbedzija), a friend and colleague who has gone missing in the tunnels. He enlists the help of a series of locals who, with the exception of Oksana Akinshina, are all portrayed by Spanish actors trying with limited success to inflect Russian accents.Along the way they cross paths with members of some sort of underground leather-coated religious mafia headed by a portly Val Kilmer, whose career seems to be in such free fall that he's resorted to appearing in dreck like this, and henchman Sage Stallone (Sly's son), who seems to have been cast merely so the Stallone name can be included in the film's marquee.Apart from watching the troupe try to navigate their way through the tunnels with the aid of a comically drawn map, and repetitive shots of them being followed or eluded by a pale faced young girl, not much else goes on throughout. Dialogue routinely switches between English and Russian, with actors frequently taking turns in each language, and entire conversations are uttered half in one and half in the other with the only apparent reason being they felt like it, adding a frustrating dimension for the viewer, over and above trying to figure out the crazily cobbled together story.About the only thing Moscow Zero gets right, however, is its title, which could only have rendered a more accurate description of this movie if the word Moscow had been omitted.
It seems that there is great potential for the story line of this film to be something worth watching. The acting was flat and the story lacked depth. There was too much reliance on camera work, which had some high points. I have to agree with the other negative comments. I only wish I had read them before buying the DVD. The film may be worth watching for free and you are bored to tears before hand. There could have been a lot more plot development with why there are homeless in Moscow (i.e. post-Soviet 'capitalism', rampant drug usage (i.e. increased heroin trafficking from Afghanistan); more development of why the resurgence of Russian Orthodoxy after the fall of the U.S.S.R.; the archaeologists themselves; or even more into the struggle against nihilism.