“Draft”: in this world, the book was spoiled

What book adaptations can be called successful? The first head of the average citizen is likely to be “Lord of the rings” “Hobbit” and “Harry Potter”, more sophisticated remember, for example, “blade Runner”, “johnny Mnemonic” or some version of “Sherlock Holmes”, and from recent works, even a “First player to get ready.” But who exactly will not fall into the lists of successful film adaptations-the newly released “Draft” based on the novel of the same name by Sergei Lukyanenko.

What is the secret of a successful film adaptation? Clearly not to transfer to the screen every word written in the book — even in “the hobbit” six hours of video footage does not correspond to 100% of the story in the 60-plus pages. In principle, it is impossible to film the book entirely — too different formats, too different hooks for which the attention clings, too different type of narrative.Therefore, in film adaptations tend to convey the essence of the text, its purpose, idea and atmosphere.
The drawling mood of “blade Runner” fits perfectly into Philip K.’s heavy, oversaturated language. Dick, epic views of juicy New Zealand in Jackson’s films capture the spirit and set up an adventure mood as well as Tolkien’s texts, and the story of a boy in round glasses and with a scar on his forehead shows the features of the life of the magical world with ease and some immediacy, while talking about important and serious even in our reality things — that in books, that in films.

It’s not in the Draft. Sergei Mokritsky’s film is not just far from the original — it broadcasts a completely different idea from the book. The book “draft” is built on the conflict of ideologies, interests, on the healthy cynicism of the modern guy Kirill, who lives in the metropolis. The film became much simpler, lost all its philosophical, revolutionary-Patriotic-rebellious mood and turned into a snotty melodrama, where the only goal of the main character is to save the lady of the heart. And, it’s a shame, Lukyanenko himself approved of this metamorphosis.The story tells about Cyril, who is abruptly and methodically erased from reality. They take away his apartment, having managed to make major repairs in it for a day and put a strange woman there, delete information about him from all registers, blur the ink in his passport and even make relatives and friends forget about his existence. And Cyril clings to his friend Kotya-open to all, even the most unreal sensations journalist, scribbling custom jaundice. Coty’s openness and spontaneity allows him to believe that Cyril has become a customs officer on the border of parallel worlds, and in the very existence of alternative versions of our Earth. Kirill himself is trying to settle down and get used to his new function, accompanying the process with pathos dialogues with those who unfortunately fall into the frame.

The role of Kirill took Nikita Volkov, reminiscent of Robert Pattinson in the twilight years, and his best friend Kotya plays Eugene Tkachuk, suspiciously similar to Taron Edgerton from the series “Kingsman”. The cast may well impress the modern generation of teenagers at the expense of at least some, but texture. That’s just playing badly. Cyril — unnecessarily pathos, ridiculous and wooden, Kotya tries to be as close to the people as possible, but remains artificial and pompous, and from other characters through low-quality seriality.

This, however, there is an explanation — to the full-length film will also be released a serial version lasting four hours, scheduled to be shown on the channel “Russia 1”. We wrote in the news that American publishers plan to start releasing theatrical series, and Russian cinema, as it turned out, is already on this path — first there was “Gogol”, already filmed in two episodes, and now it’s the turn of “draft”.

Because of this, for example, the film plus not the most outstanding acting received a ragged montage. It seems to be glued together from scattered scraps, and not even specialized glue, and children’s plaster. Scenes flow into each other in a completely unclear way, the connection between them is not traced, they can break off in the middle of a word. Yes that there, himself the film in end broke off on mid-sentence! Because the authors hope to shoot a sequel based on the sequel called “Chistovik”.I hope that this will not happen, because I do not want this incompetent world to get at least some development. A pathetic change of idea from philosophy to romance can be forgiven, if the picture was at least a little attractive, and the characters wanted to sympathize. But the characters seem to be talking heads, and visually the film is terrible. Action oak, his oak saturated slow-mo and irrationality. The accompanying special effects seem Hello even from the noughties, and the nineties. The transformation of the former game designer Cyril into Billy Blaskovitz, with the determination of a freight train pruschego on foes, looks too unconvincing and miserable, and it is impossible to look at the enemies themselves without hysterical laughter. The scenery is made hastily, there is no depth in the variations of alternative Moscow — they are painted on a green screen with randomly scattered palm trees and pagodas. Fighting dolls, transparent skin, they look so cheap and hacky that it is a shame to look at them. Even the audio track of the text is not synchronized with the movement of the actors ‘ lips. What is there to talk about?

In one of the series “South Park” showed a hybrid of a man with, it seems, a goat or a donkey. The creators were very proud of them, that’s just a hybrid of their existence was not pleased and asked every passer-by to kill him. The film “Draft” — the same unfortunate hybrid, as if assembled from disparate body parts in a completely dysfunctional Frankenstein. This Frankenstein has no idea why he needs a left leg or a right hand, he does not even have the desire to find out, clarify and tell. Created it, of course, with love (and with the desire to repeat the success of “patrols”), but from pieces of corpses to collect something alive and causing empathy is very difficult. The authors of the “Draft” did not work.
And dealing with this creation is not desirable. I want to spare him and kill him.