The end of the puddle

“The day when the earth stopped” the new blockbuster about the end of the world was released - the third film of the director Scott Derrickson, who managed to make the thrillers “Six Demons Emily Rose” and “Risators from Ada - 5”. For the filming of the film "The day when the earth stopped" Derrickson was given a bunch of money and Keanu Reeves. As a result, they received a remake of one of the most cult American fantastic films of the 1950s.

In the 1920s, the nameless polar explorer (Keanu Reeves), making his way out of last strength through the ice, sees a strange luminous ball. He pounds him with a pick, immediately falling into a fainting from the light breaking out. Waking up, the polar explorer does not find any ball. And his own fate remains unknown.

Apparently, after 90 --100 years, almost the same ball flies to Washington, only more. Two crawl out of it: a huge humanoid robot from an unknown, but very strong material and an alien in human form: to be precise, in the guise of the same polar explorer (that is, Keanu Reeves). The alien seems to Klaata and wants to talk with representatives of all nations of the Earth. The military and scientists do not believe in his location and try to interrogate with the help of a lie detector and other underdeveloped earthly technologies. The only person who believes in Klaata is the microbiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelli - in the 1980s, the nymph Sarah from the Labyrinth Jim Henson, now - a typical fighting girlfriend, passing from the hero to the hero). She helps him to escape from the laboratory, and then joins him on a trip with obscure goals. What attracts a woman to a cold alien, besides the fact that the heart is Veschun, it remains incomprehensible. Klaatu never smiles for the whole film, he says that you can’t suspect in eloquence, and besides, it unequivocally declares his intention to destroy humanity. Moreover, not out of maliciousness, but from the best motives: the alien council decided that it was stupid to sacrifice a planet for one species, prone to thoughtless destruction of the environment of their habitat, especially since it is completely impossible to agree with this species.

However, incredible. Communicating with Helen, her adopted son Jacob (son of Will Smith Jaden Smith) and her teacher, great mathematician Professor Banghard (John Enkens, his mustache - the most living that is in the film), Klaat discovers that his heart melts.

Klaata thinks about whether to wait for the extermination of mankind. But the mechanism is already launched. His friend Robot scattered into millions of microscopic bugs, typhoon destroying a person and all his affairs. While something else remains, Klaat is in a hurry to stop the process.

The original “The day when the earth stopped” in 1951 was shot by director Robert Wise, who had previously helped Orson Wells himself on the set. Even by the standards of the 1950s, it was not quite a blockbuster, rather something like a naive fantastic noir with an ironic, similar to Humphrey Bogart Hero (which Keanu Reeves is far from Claata Keanu Reeves) and with the idea that it is more difficult to distinguish from good ones.

However, Wisee, it seems, became a cult film for not some virtues, but a very accurate hit in his modern situation: it had a foreboding of the inevitable binding of the world in a cold war, to get out of which only something unexpected-like a flying saucer.

In this sense, "the day when the earth stopped" Derrickson - the Anti -Paying Film, a complete non -fragmentation, a shot in milk from an ultra -modern missile installation. Instead of the Cold War, there is a frigid problem of environmental pollution, which, of course, is important, but still not as the basis for the Apocalypse. So all incredible special effects and plot flirting with nanotechnology do not cause anxiety, but even the slightest chill. And the destroyer and savior of mankind Claata here (maybe because he was unsuccessfully cast in an alien force with a frozen polar explorer), is capable of only the stilt feelings.

By what is the problem, to save or not save the world, in the film turns into a complex illustration of simple calculation: what puddle to remove at the beginning - right or left.

12/14/2008 / Igor Gulin, the material was published in the newspaper No. 238 of December 15, 2008.