43. Attraction (Prityazhenie ); movie review

ATTRACTION (PRITYAZHENIE)
Cert 12A
117 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, sex language

I realise that I have become a super cinema geek when I come up with trends surrounding the frequency foreign films hit our big screens.
So, Turkish movies tend to be shown at the start and end of the year but not in the summer and Chinese movies are most likely to be screened in January and February, as are Russia ones.
Thus, the big budget Russian picture Attraction has even found its way on to multiplex IMAX screens.
I only saw it in 2D in the company of five other, single, over-30s men and for a second I felt as if I had been transported back to a 1970s porn cinema, especially when I thought about the movie's title.
However, I can report that with the exception of one very moderate sex scene, Attraction is as clean as a whistle.
In fact, it would probably please teenage audiences more than the nerdy brigade who were gathered at Nottingham Cineworld (I include myself among these).
Fedor Bondarchuk's movie begins very promisingly with a cloaked alien space ship being shot down, plunging through the earth's atmosphere and crashing through a Moscow suburb.
The special effects are startlingly good but, disappointingly, the movie does not live up to its War Of The Worlds-style opening.
It stars Irina Starshenbaum as a schoolgirl, Yulya, who survives the spaceship crash because she is in bed with an entirely unsuitable boyfriend (Alexander Petrov).
The pair then set out to find out more about the mysterious craft which has been hidden behind a Russian military blockade.
To add to the spice, Yulya's father (Oleg Menshikov) just happens to be the head of the military operation and is a single parent who is constantly at odds with his daughter.
Unfortunately, Bondarchuk allows his pursuit of an exciting narrative to cloud the need for detail.
For example, the protection of the crash site is so lax as to be ludicrous as is the manner in which daughter can put domestic pressure on her high-profile dad.
Indeed, the second half of the movie is mired in daftness as it drifts into the realms of sci-fi fantasy meets Enid Blyton.
And that is a shame. This could have been an antidote to the myriad films about space craft descending on the United States and Americans saving the world.
Instead, it falls into the similar traps of so many Hollywood pictures of its ilk.

Reasons to watch: its spectacular opening
Reasons to avoid: falls into too many movie cliches

Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: yes
Nudity: none
Overall rating: 6/10

Director quote - Fedor Bondarchuck: "It’s about first of all, [the] aggressive attitude within ourselves, intolerance to anything foreign. From the very first moment with our filming group – and this was the rule, the filming protocol – we just got rid of the word ‘alien’. They’re just ‘others’, they’re ‘different’ –  with a different skin, a different nationality, a different religion, a different sexual orientation. 

The big question - how aggressive or friendly would we really be towards aliens?

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