This film is the second part of the two-part saga spanning over three and a half hours combined (the first - Dark Planet came out in the same year). One has to watch both films back to back as they are one continuous story; the first one stopping in the middle of the narration with no closure whatsoever.It is based on a very popular dystopian sci-fi novel Prisoners of Power by Strugatsky brothers written in 1969 and published in English numerous times and depicts a post-nuclear war totalitarian society on another planet, where a young lone adventurer in space from Earth crash lands his ship and embarks on an adventurous and dangerous journey to free the people of the planet from their misery, himself belonging to a much more advanced and highly moral human society of the distant future which by then defeated disease and inequality with each human possessing incredible physical powers.Now onto this screen adaptation. The casting went horribly wrong in the selection of the main character - the young man from Earth - looking like the tanned curly blond boy from erotic flick The Blue Lagoon from the 80's with pretty bad acting, and one of other main characters looking completely like Gary Oldman's character Zorg in The Fifth Element; the script was terribly written with bad dialogues and jerky story-telling. The story is at times confusing and poses questions along the way, which is very distracting. Although the director did an overall okay job, he's not very original and his visualisation of the film is an endless list of stolen ideas from the popular western movies: cars from Total Recall and Mad Max, bat-mobiles, kung-fu style fights with fantastic jumps taken straight from The Matrix. To add to that is the endless shouting by actors in a very "russian" style that most of the time don't make sense and is a pure overacting.On the positive side the film is high budget with massive sets in the alien city, battles outside the city and fantastic gardens reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings; very good CGI and sound. And, of course, it's based on a solid and entertaining story, with a surprise ending of the saga leaves one with a feeling that the time spent watching it wasn't wasted. It's certainly worth taking a look, if only for the great story and special effects. Recommended.

This movie is a direct continuation of the first film "Inhabited Island" or "Obitaemyi Ostrov." It continues in the same great style and pace as the first film, but you have to see the first film to understand the storyline.This movie is particularly great because there is a lot of action and great visuals, but a very interesting plot and deep philosophical ideas are what make it a truly great film. While it is science fiction, it is different from many science fiction films in that at the end of the day this is a movie about us: people living on this Earth today. We too have oppressive government regimes controlling the masses, we too have people among us fighting for ideas of justice. The end is very well done and leaves one thinking.

The director Fiodor Bondarchuk seems himself to be under the influence of the dangerous "A-rays", declaring unconditional faithfulness to the letter on the original Book, and not paying any attention to how it plays out as a film.The book has all the elements needed for a Star Wars-like scenario: it creates a complete detailed world full with its history ("Noon Universe"); it has a number of mysteries that are gradually revealed to the reader - "I'm your father, Luke!" type moments and more. It has a number of philosophical connotations about historical necessities and taking responsibility for people's destiny. It is an epic masterpiece.But! The authors of the 1968 book didn't think about turning it into a sci-fi movie. The majority of the book is written from the view point of its heroes, describing their feelings and thoughts. Dialogue and action takes secondary role.So this book was taken and stripped off of any and all non-action language, and turned into a scenario. The result is extremely fast-paced, bullet-point-like re-telling of the main events of the book.The act is horrible across the board. Of special notice is Koldun (Enchanter), which is all about the voice. This is the voice that reads out what can be thought as A. & B. Strugatsky's (ABS) actual position on the main dilemma. This voice is delivering one of the main messages of the film. The movie creators recognized that, and turned the Koldun scene into a separate scene, as opposed to being part of the "Meeting". But the voice is absolutely unremarkable, and just quickly reads through the text.As a side note - the Bomber is just pathetic. The bomber itself is not significant altogether, and could be just left out. But it was left in, and instead of a complex technical scene involving a large airplane, the creators opted for a cheaper CG solution. This is strange to say the least, given the $40M budget of the film.

There are lots of good SF movies, but I cannot remember any, which has not bad pictures and leaves unanswered questions in your mind after you visit the cinema. The movie which is unrealistic on the one hand and has so many similarities with our daily life on the other. The movie where there is no evil and no goodness, where you see just people and you can make a decision who is good and who is bad. It's up to you.It's a pity that people estimate quality of such movies by the quality of the visual effects without thinking what authors wanted to say. May be visual effects are not that good for 40M USD, but they are right enough for this movie. A little bit more and we have a traditional Hollywood delirium with good pictures, lots of noise and nothing inside.