IMDb listing
KinoPoisk.ru listing*Kino-teatr.ru listing*
Megacritic.ru listing*
Exler.ru (A. Eksler) review*
Film.ru (S. Kvasha) review*
Filmz.ru review*
Gazeta.ru (M. Zhuravlev) review*
Kino-Teatr.ru (M. Milnan) review*
KinoKadr.ru (R. Korneev) review*
KinoNews.ru (D. Zhigalov) review*
Video.ru (I. Golocova) review*
Gamers / In the Game (orig. На игре / Na Igre) [2009] [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*[MC.ru]*(directed and screenplay cowritten by Pavel Sanaev [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* along with Aleksandr Chubaryan [ru.wikip]*[GR]*[IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* based on Chubrayan's novel Games in Life (orig. Игры в жизнь / Igry v Zhizn) [2003] [GR]*[Amzn]* is considered the first Russian movie dedicated to "cyberpunk." The film has since spawned (in Russia) two sequels as well as a television series. It serves as the fifth stop in my 2016 Russian Film Tour. (Note that I had actually hope to include this film in my first, 2015 RFT but simply ran out of time and never fully wrote it up then. So I include here now).
In the opening (and quite adrenaline driven) opening sequence of the film (think honestly of our Fast & Furious [2009] films only in this case set at a über-hyped / über-slick (modern-day Russian) gaming convention), a team of college students from Nizhny Novgorod win a multi-discipline computer gaming competition (from car race to medieval combat to first person shooter) and as a prize each receive a cd-rom with an "experimental game" that promises to "take them to a new level."
When each of them try to install the game on their computers, it fries their disc drives. However the game's installation does more than that. By means of some kind of intense electromagnetic energy burst, the CDROM "installs" a multipurpose "gaming package" (from martial arts, to driving, to shooting) into their brains. SO ... these previously quite average seeming college students (except for them having been really tough (bad-a..) "video-gamers") now become really tough (bad-a...) fighters in real life.
And it is kinda amusing how they discover this: One of the group, nicknamed "Komar" (meaning "Mosquito") (played by Evgeniy Kharlanov [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) who manages to finally convince a girl Lena (played by Agnia Ditkovskite [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) to go out with him, takes her to a nice Middle Eastern (to the Russians Central Asian) restaurant, only to have his date being harassed by some of the waiters. Well, the game package installed "into his brain" "triggers" something in the former "little mosquito" and ... one can guess what happens to the folks who made the mistake of harassing his date ;-)
Later a number of the gamers in this team, by random accident "happen upon" a group of about 80 mercenaries assembled in a warehouse somewhere (What were those mercenaries doing there? Who knows... but this is _contemporary Russia_ with a lot of "private armies" / "organized crime") When a couple of said mercenaries draw their weapons, the "newly installed" "threat trigger" inside them goes off, and ... when the dust clears there are 80 formerly _really tough mercenaries_ lying about the warehouse, wasted (killed) by this small band of college student gamers.
That of course "catches the attention" of the Oligarch (played actually quite wonderfully by Viktor Verzhbitskiy [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) to whom those mercenaries belonged. Said "richer than God" (and arguably "almost as power as God") Oligarch flies about Russia in a GIANT _WHITE_ TITANIUM / CLOTH ZEPPELIN-LIKE AIRSHIP ;-) ... Honestly, if you're gonna be Evil / wanna "make an impression" this is "a mode of transportation" to "look into" ;-). HIS "tasteful" yet ENORMOUS "air ship" was "CASTING ITS SHADOW" _down_ on EVERYBODY ;-) ;-).
Well said, Oligarch was not necessarily "angry" at the five gamers who wasted his company of (he would have thought) armed to the teach / highly trained mercenaries. Instead, he'd kinda like to recruit them ...
The rest of the film "plays out" ;-) from there ... It really made for a FUN / COMPELLING and IMHO unsurprisingly _successful_ film / story and one that honestly _a lot_ of Westerners (especially younger people) really ought to know about.
Good / great job!
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