A Look at Paragraph 78

So, "Paragraph 78" started its glorious theatrical run this Thursday. Although promo material looked sleek and picture seemed polished, the final product has major flaws. First of all, "Paragrapgh 78", as you may know, was divided in two halves 90 min. each. It was well known in online community, but not among major audience, because producers "forgot" to mention this fact during promotion. As a result, a lot of people were like "What the..." when the movie ended and a teaser for the next part rolled in. Think a lot of people felt cheated.

But here's the point. The script sucked. It is clear that original plan was to release it as one movie, as a lot of footage was just plain unnescessary. 40 minutes could've been cut out easily, and I believe that's the result of reshoots - producers at one point decided to extend lenght and tossed tonns of unneeded material that served almost no story development. Khleborodov, the writer and the director, said the first half is meant to introduce characters and show conflict among team members. Instead we get like 5 identical scenes involving "love triangle", and that's it. Hell, there's hardly anything going on even when they get to the secret base. Most of one-liners sound like a sad attempt in being too cool.

My other issues are editing, which is as plain and uninspired as my table, and overuse of slo-mo. Yes, the pictures is stylish, it has depth and contrast, but 9 out of 10 cameramen in Hollywood can get visualisation as good. Can't say much about acting, all did an OK job (producer Jusup Bahshiev plays Doctor, just a small bit of trivia).

My score - 4/10
I'm renting the next installment on DVD.