 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Salyut-7 • Year: 2017 • Country: Russia • Director: Klim Shipenko • Main cast: Lyubov Aksyonova, Ilya Andryukov, Pavel Derevyanko • Runtime: 119 minutes • Production company: CTB Film Company, Globus-film, Lemon Films Studio • TRAILER
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In 1985, in the Cold War era, Soviet space station Salyut 7, orbiting the Earth, had all communications cut from the Control Center. Russia and the USA were in the middle of their Space Race, so this matter was a big deal for both of the parts. Russians saw it as a big weakness proof towards their enemies, and the Americans thought they could collect the Soviet satellite, their pride of space engineering, in order to steal the technology. Besides that, the out of control object was a menace for our planet inhabitants, since falling free from the sky totally uncontrolled could end up in a disaster bringing untold casualties. These are true facts, and the movie Salyut-7 dramatizes those events (adding more epics to what really happened, I must say).
Russian filmmaker Klim Shipenko co-writes and directs this historical adaptation taking some narrative freedom in order to make it more attractive for the audience. The movie ends up being closer to Michael Bay madness titles like Armageddon (1998) than an actual historical film. But hey, that doesn’t have to be necessarily bad. Although in this case, it looks kind of out of place.
The movie is not bad at all. The almost 2 hours of running time flies fast enough, and rarelly gets boring. The characters’ descriptions though are not as well defined as one could desire in order to get more into them, but at least the performences from the two main actors are honest. The script is not the best one, which is normal in these kind of spectacular productions Hollywood style, but at least manages to keep the interest from the audience until the end of the movie.
The biggest assets Salyut-7 has are, undoubtfully, the special effects. The out in space sequences are very well filmed and realistic, as well as the interiors of the space vessels and the action scenes. In fact, one of the most attractive points of the movie, which has also been one of the headlines filmmakers use to advertise the film, as the director Klim Shipenko stated when introducing it, is the fact of having several minutes of running time filmed with zero-gravity. Or, at least, that is what looks like when you watch it. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if this movie manages to achieve several technical and visual awards in some festivals.
Overall, Salyut-7 is an entertaining movie made to entertain whoever has the interest to catch it. I won’t say it’s unmissable because besides some historical curiosity it won’t bring much to the viewers, but it’s a fun one to watch.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6537238
