Shot in the Dark

CAST: Emile Hirsch,Olivia Thirlby,

Max Minghella

Rating: **

A Moscow of partying,fun-loving youths and brave,helpful soldiers,of nightclubs and malls and Starbucks and McDonald’s,and pebbled pathways that are not the Kremlin — that’s the achievement of this US-Russian co-production. And that’s about it.

Woozy on science and woozier on fightback,this is yet another alien film splashing desperately about to be different. So its aliens are interlinked with “electromagnetic” waves/energy in some manner,who can’t see through glass,who set off electronic items on contact,who can be “kicked in the ass” with a “microwave” gun devised by a Russian electrician in his backyard,and who can then be shot with a normal bullet,only to shatter into pieces of rock-like things.

The human race is represented,largely,by four Americans and a Swede,the Americans making up two nicely matched couples. The Swede has duped two of them. Just so you know who will die first.

The Russians trail in later,and it is then that the film perks up with characters who show some individualistic quirks.

Director Gorak has been the art director of films such as Minority Report and Fight Club and his imagination of a city in distress is realistic enough here,though,it is nothing you haven’t seen before. Still,an airplane that’s crashed through a mall does stop you short.

Once they have scorched the humans,or at least the ones who have popped up orange-like on their radars,the aliens that are mostly little blobs of light are content sucking up precious metals “which can conduct electricity” right into the sky.

What we can be grateful for is that the aforementioned few survivors of this alien massacre do not mount a David-taking-on-Goliath battle here,concentrating on running,hiding,running and hiding. Their goal is a nuclear submarine that can take them out to somewhere,someplace. That’s a neat exit for a film that,in claiming a world-wide doomsday,leaves itself few.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com