Despite the dangerous moments, some shallow adventures came out. I don't know why, and I don't know what that means. What has each survivor learned from this month?
A group of people in the wild face a serious threat, as a result of which their survival is not ensured. Riding along the mountain river, meeting with the locals, not promising anything good, clarifying relations in an extreme situation - in a word - the viewer is waiting for a fascinating and really exciting spectacle!
Everything would be nothing, but only “exciting and really exciting spectacle” Director Andrei Simonov did not work. If the script was more elaborate, if the director was more experienced, if the actors’ play was more inspiring, then it would definitely turn out a cool movie, and instead – 80 minutes of confusion and unclear movements through forests and rivers, frankly disappointing the viewer.
The notorious Moscow majors, who climb from the screens every day, were no exception to the “Pain Threshold”, because here, according to the plan, it is precisely such metropolitan things that faced danger in the wild. To be honest, the director could quite do without a entanglement showing the viewer who the main characters are, and reveal their characters during the film. And so, the beginning gave absolutely no information (except that the characters are majors) and absolutely did not affect the further development of events, which was simply superfluous.
There is no development and theme with the instructor, whose role was played by Yevgeny Mundum. He acted as a minor character, flashing for a couple of minutes in the shot and disappearing, although his last words hinted at his further appearance. There is no development of the Moscow storyline, according to which tourists left the capital. After all, there is nothing to suggest that criminals are being sought by law enforcement.
Further development is a set of scenes where someone runs away from someone, runs to someone and shoots someone. The film in reality does not reflect its name and does not tolerate the viewer all the pain that the main characters should experience. There is too little pain here to consider a movie really a “pain threshold.”
Behind all these catch-ups, the director missed an important detail - in the wild you can not do without wild animals! If a predatory beast appeared in one of the scenes, inflicting a severe or even fatal wound on one of the characters, the film would have another adrenaline impulse!
Imagine a company fleeing one danger and facing another! Someone breaks a leg, especially since it is simply done in mountainous areas, which means that this is another serious factor in order to increase the overall degree of emotional experience of the viewer. However, the plot, as well as the characters present in it, do not cause any emotions. What is happening on the screen does not convey everything that tourists could experience. To be honest, I never understood why it was necessary to show the majors. Couldn't the main characters be presented as ordinary tourists? Or their ' major' status should make it clear to the viewer that majors are not adapted to life outside the capital?
In 1994, a good thriller “Wild River” was released with Kevin Bacon and Meryl Streep in the lead roles. It tells about a family that, like these Moscow majors, met a group of amateur rafters. So that film, if you compare it with the “Pain Threshold” is much better, because just there you can see the struggle for survival, and incredible psychological pressure, and extreme situations that make you watch what is happening unblinking eyes. In Soviet cinema, by the way, there is also a film where events develop in the taiga, and the actors run through the forests with weapons – the film “Find and Dispose” about the robbery of collectors. Even over the years, these pictures are much stronger than “Pain Threshold”, which appeared in the form of an assortment of steep themes, woven together by the inept hand of the director. Even the absurd storyline with betrayal, he was not able to complete and roll out a shocking plot twist to the viewer, which could possibly change the disposition of forces and made good bad and vice versa.
The finale is also frankly disappointing, because in such films, the viewer expects that someone will sooner or later die, and the survivors will be even harder.
The only thing for which the “Pain Threshold” should be put a plus is for the views of the Altai Mountains, striking in their beauty and fascinating with pristine nature. The rest is a big and fat minus.
But look at you. I do not impose my opinion on anyone.
In the genre of films about survival on a mountain river, everything is very simple - in 1972, John Boorman directed the film "Redemption", which became an American classic. All right, the genre could be closed! Don’t misunderstand, films like “Aguirre, the wrath of God” or “Geographer Globe Propyl” although they touch on the topic of survival, but they are not genre and rather still dramas with their own messages and free plot scheme, while “Pain Threshold” (appreciate this skillful play of words!) is the most traditional representative. And I’m not saying that it’s impossible to remove a better Burman – perhaps, just for some reason no one does it and everyone, like in cheap slashers, is content with just jumping through images-stamps: “a group of urban people making difficult decisions in survival conditions”, “river and rafting on it”, “someone is injured, someone goes cuckoo”, “the goal is to get out alive”, “thugs will rape someone”. And considering even how the last point in this film is played senselessly, easily and effortlessly, involuntarily you understand that the director was simply afraid to make even a normal film on a given topic, i.e. tickling nerves and playing on your perception of human dignity, and therefore awkwardly smoothed out most of the angles because of which the film is simply not taken seriously.
The first important disadvantage is the exposure. In the first minutes, the film for some reason shows us how a group of majors on the Helik leaves Moscow traffic police and crashes into a restaurant, because of which the characters are forced to leave the arms of Moscow flyovers and go to the world of primitive cruelty. The rest of the film has to wonder why this moment was. The whole essence of the survival film is based on the compassion of the viewer to the heroes, and here it is as if the director tells us: “No, no, they are bastards!” Don't be afraid of them. And it doesn't go any further. Moreover, ten minutes later, at the time of the first incident on the river, the film puts on wind music for choral chants - a rather mediocre reception to catch up with a moment of greater tragedy and compassion. Literally, after the exhibition, where we are told that the heroes are bastards, we try to compassion for them with fake music. The editor, apparently, the bipolar thing happened when he glued the bundle.
Another important part of the fact that you probably will never see this movie is acting. I will say a terrible thing even for myself – Kurtsyn is actually a good actor, but his role is more schematic comedies. And his tantrums here are pretty good, but still the idea remains that he got into the wrong film, and the authors took him here without understanding how to use it. The other three main characters are equally terrible, regardless of whose appearance you like best. They are so faceless that you begin to empathize with the team of antagonists - with the acting there is also not all smooth, but their characters are more interesting, they have drama, tragedy, contradictions, a hurricane of passion and a storm of emotions. They were prescribed characters, and not “stupid major No. 1”, “stupid major No. 2”, “stupid major No. 3 female”, etc., and therefore everything more or less interesting that is in the film is built on the line of “bandits in the forest”.
That is why, starting from the village of local residents and almost to the final - "Pain Threshold", in general, a good genre film. Acting and camera work do not get better, but it is interesting to follow the jumps in the plot and unexpected turns, even if these “unexpected” plot development are completely inappropriate and stupid, but the film so lowers the bar in its first half that you even watch them with interest. The finale is simply empty. If we talk about the scene with the village - this is actually the only moment of the film, which can definitely be called good, where everything falls out of hand, everything that gave hope, turns against the hero and with this comes the realization of a huge unfriendly world living by its own laws.
But a couple of good moments the film does not help and it will remain a faceless, helpless genre trifle, which thanks to the Ministry of Culture this year and so in abundance. By the way, the Ministry of Culture is not involved in this film, and therefore it can be concluded that although the state systematically kills genre domestic cinema, the problem is not only in it, but much deeper and even if tomorrow the state withdraws all sponsorship of second-rate genre crafts, they will not stop coming out at least because most filmmakers do not have other ideas about it.
I haven’t seen this kind of nonsense in a long time – it’s just creepy. The whole movie is nonsense and stupid. I can’t understand how this can be filmed and released; it’s some kind of mockery of the audience, blasphemy of the Altai Mountains, where the shooting took place, and a mockery of our entire country.
The beginning of the film, however, gives hope - the golden youth gets into trouble (a major accident with victims); they, of course, are excused and removed for a while from the city. And then the director would walk around on the topic of realizing his wrong life, reconsidering values, re-education, growing up, repentance in deeds done, turning into normal people, but this does not smell close!
Every two minutes I caught myself thinking that I wanted to stop watching, but the desire to know the finale did not allow me to do so.
In general, in the film there is neither a worthy meaning, nor a quality style of performance, nor any semblance of morality.
I do not know what assessment to give it - it is either a deliberate diversion aimed at disintegrating the youth, or a natural product of an already degraded society, or rather a part of it.
So, all that is positive in the film is the shortness (1 hour 20 minutes) and the abundance of summer Siberian landscapes - they are magnificent from all angles.
What is negative in the film?
obscene, vulgar and low-intellectual vocabulary of all characters, both good and bad;
The absence of normal actors - those who are considered the main characters can not cause a drop of respect;
- shameless scenes with sexual overtones;
- the lack of artistry among the actors and the study of personnel - a feeling that the film was slicked "in a hurry" without bothering, and reported where necessary;
Scenes of violence and bloodshed.
I wanted to speak about the lack of sane motivation in the actions of all the characters of the film, about the lack of role models for the film, about the undisclosed idea, about the harmful effect on the mass audience, but once again I felt disgust.
It is no secret that in modern Russian cinema almost do not remove good survival thrillers, where the main characters, being outside the comfort zone, are victims of deadly circumstances, not to mention films about survival in the wild. Therefore, every time there is news about shooting something similar, many fans of this genre are looking forward to the premiere in the movie and the opportunity to see it all on the big screen.
And the premiere of the film “Pain Threshold” is one of such events, because the topic itself is of interest, and the cast is not full of blurred faces, unless, of course, you count Roman Kurtsyn.
In the story, a group of young people during their next night party becomes the cause of a serious traffic accident. And now, in order not to catch the eye of journalists, night hooligans go for a while on a trip to the wild places of big Russia. And everything would be fine, but only during the new entertainment, the characters encounter a group of armed criminals in the forest, hiding from the police. At some point, conflict occurs, and young people are immediately targeted by dangerous repeat offenders. Wishing to escape, the heroes rush to run through the dense forests of the taiga and thereby launch a series of bloody events for all others.
The first thing that immediately catches the eye is how the authors from the very beginning show the viewer all the worthlessness of the main characters, who even after the incident do not feel the slightest regret for what they did. Vulgar youth in their usual manner behave disgustingly and repulsively. It is interesting what the authors who came up with such a setup hoped for, it is unclear, because, in fact, people are offered to empathize with those who did not care about people from a high bell tower. Of course, someone can say that during the plot development, some characters will surely change and become worthy members of society, but, unfortunately, nothing like this will happen here. The disgusting will become more disgusting, the unpleasant will distance themselves even further, and those who in the previous situation did not manifest themselves in any way, and in subsequent events will not be marked by anything special. None of the characters are subjected to any cardinal changes, but the antagonists in this case are completely surprising. After watching it, it may even seem that the film was not about majors at all, but, on the contrary, about the complex relationships within the family of fugitives. It is in this direction that the audience’s empathy and interest are observed. But, alas, even here, the authors manage to bring a seemingly clear and simple situation to some kind of nonsense of a bald mare, where the motivations of the characters are beyond some aspect of human understanding. Who, where and why the characters do this at one time or another is unclear, turning the whole story into a banal walk through the torments. Although initially the plot plot completely calmly hinted at an even classic thriller about survival, but the result is complete nonsense and theater of the absurd, which is still without final specifics. Alas, but the authors unfortunately did not complete any storyline concerning the main characters. On the one hand, the authors can be understood, since they clearly intended to surprise the viewer and tried to violate some canons of this genre. But even if this is the case, why are the stories, actions and images of the heroes themselves absolutely illogical? What the creators wanted to tell with their film remains a mystery, because nothing intelligible comes to mind, but questions, bewilderment and ultimately disappointment remain.
If we talk about casting, then everything is done very well in this segment, especially for actors in the role of antagonists, whose images turned out to be quite bright, meaningful and interesting. You believe in everyone from the first minute and fully understand their history. Whatever you say, but almost all the actors coped with the task, but, unfortunately, because of the script, they simply had nothing to play, so even in the frame there was a certain confusion and misunderstanding of everything that was happening. The advantages can also be attributed to the technical aspects of the production, but even this does not save the picture from failure in the eyes of the audience, for whom a good and high-quality story is in the first place.
Of course, I want to praise the film and say thank you to the creators for such a rare chance to see the Russian survive-thriller, but, unfortunately, the curved scenario outweighs significant positive points, so if not in the cinema, then at home you can see the picture and draw your conclusions. Have a good time.