Aleksandr Boguslavskiy

(On Cable TV, September 2018) It’s not that Beyond the Edge is a terrible film, but it will work much better if you have some indulgence to spare. There’s definitely a novelty in seeing a Russian action/fantasy film executed with the visual slickness and decent budgets we associate with Hollywood productions. Alas, this is undermined somewhat by the dubbing effect—the Anglosphere doesn’t have much expertise in movie dubbing (at least compared to the francophone world), and the vocal talent hired here aren’t always the most convincing, which compounds the somewhat amateurish acting skills also on display. (Except for Antonio Banderas — he’s out of his element, but he’s all right.)  But those are minor issues compared to a script with fundamental issues: The pacing is off, the plot points are frequently obscured and it’s as if the screenwriter has little idea how to structure sequences so that they lead to dramatic payoffs—time and time again, Beyond the Edge is fuzzy on what’s going on or disappointing in the execution of its plotting. While the film uses a generous number of special effects and its own brand of fantastical mythology, they don’t cohere into a satisfying whole—the visuals are nice, but their integration is underwhelming. (The way the superpowers are depicted particularly seems like a wasted opportunity.)  The plot itself is a blender mix of other better movies: While I don’t usually enjoy rattling off movie titles as references, think Ocean’s Eleven with X-Men with Inception and you’ll be on your way to the blend of influences here—albeit with the forewarning that it never gets close to these influences in terms of effectiveness. Still, I don’t feel as if I lost my time watching Beyond the Edge—as annoying as it can be in stringing its sequences together, there are a few stronger moments here, especially when writers-directors Aleksandr Boguslavskiy and Francesco Cinquemani can dispense with that complicated dialogue stuff and just let loose with the special effects or the cool directing tricks pulled from those influences. The end of the film is a bit better than its beginning (although that ending is far too abrupt), but a hypothetical Hollywood remake (note: this is not a request) would have a lot of work to do to fix those issues in order to make the entire thing flow better.