I didn’t like it, but I tried to get honest. I could say that this is a weak attempt to shoot the Russian “Darkness”, but alas, it was shot 2 years earlier, so it is original. A very weak untwisted plot, no tails intertwine with others, characters who come from nowhere, having no overlapping moments, and go nowhere, without denouements, without any conclusions for the viewer. Who was this guy who auditioned everyone, worked for a politician himself and dug under him, and eventually worked with the hero and went somewhere missing on a boat? What was the subject of this money that was being passed back and forth? Why? Who were all these incomprehensible politicians, killers? None of them was killed, not punished, the wife of the hero was not saved, she just disappeared, erased from the plot. Like her first lover and the story of her madness. I thought that by bringing the money of the murdered (why?) assistant to his wife’s lover, he would somehow trigger a series of events to bring her back (why? he let her go), but in the end, she was enslaved to a perverted politician, what was the point of this ridiculous act? How did you prevent the murder of another politician? It's gone. Why was there a drug scene in his house? Absolutely incredible nonsense with a technique of concealment from a burned-out ancient library, as if the hero of one superpower is not enough. The hero didn’t save anyone, didn’t get anything, didn’t do anything, like the character from “Darkland” or “The Prophet” did. The ending absolutely did not save him from persecution, did not give him peace, no money, no exploits for people. The film simply merged into nowhere, although in the beginning he had his best intentions for a high-quality Russian film of the new wave. But no. Another nail in the coffin of domestic cinema.
In the end, the American fed, secretly dreaming of being a filmmaker, finds on the advice of the hero the script of the film, which is prophesied Oscar. The script is called the same as this movie. A kind of secret Freudian fantasy of illiterate authors, which is never destined to come true and therefore decided to dream about it.