Tag: Film review

The Last Bogatyr 2, Root of Evil is…?

I’m sure you have been waiting for baited breath – as Mama has – for the second instalment of the Russian made Disney fairytale Last Bogatyr (slash Knight, slash Hero, slash Warrior) vaguely promised at the end of the first film.

But that came out back in 2017 and Mama had almost lost hope when an idle google came across the info it would be out within the year.

[Pause for the global pandemic]

After one failed attempt to get into a screening with a much reduced cinema capacity, Mama and the somewhat less enthusiastic rest of the family (there’s also a cartoon about a horse out) settled down in a darkened room OUTSIDE OF OUR OWN FOUR WALLS and watched the Last Bogatyr 2 (slash Knight, slash Hero, slash Warrior), Root of Evil.

Ivan (Viktor Khorinyak), the reluctant hero from the real world, returns, and has somewhat uneasily settled down to fairytale living, only sneaking back to the civilization of Moscow, ooooh, once a day for a hot bath and some proper coffee, a practice which surely many Russians with a datcha can relate.

In fact, almost every single character from the first film is squeezed into this one. Given that the film makers have also added new arrivals on top of that, this means that some people are rather pushed for meaningful screen time, or any real point to their being there at all aside from a name check and perhaps one good moment each. Vasilysa (Mila Sivatskaya), for example, who was one of Ivan’s main travelling companions and the muscle for the group for the first film really doesn’t have much to do apart from continue to be Ivan’s love interest this time, despite her presence on the inevitable quest.

Koshchei (Konstantin Lavronenko), who of course returns, he’s Deathless,  and Baba Yaga (Elena Yakovleva) are rather upstaged in the grumpy comic side kick role by Kolabok (Garik Kharlamov), a hooligan bread roll (yes really), whose back story Mama once actually learned off by heart in Russian the better to torture our early years with (‘…and then the fox ate him’). Not easily done.

There’s also not one, not two, but three villains this time round, although they have managed to fit a bit of moral tension into this situation, plotwise, which means Mama will allow it. That said, annoyingly, this time Mama did guess the plot twist related to Galina (Elena Valyushkina) and her excellently coiffed daughter (Ekaterina Vilkova). The ROOT of EVIL, geddit? Well, you will.

Two ominous women stand looking determined in the film the Last Bogatyr 2 Root of Evil

Aside from the minor issues of overstuffing the cast list, there are plenty of jokes; Ivan is both endearingly caddish and what he lacks in true heroic ability, he makes up for in what is surely a very timely reminder of the value of acceptance of the full range of the weird and wonderful in Belogorie; the fight scenes are fast and furious; there are some genuine pang-inducing moments of sadness at opportunities lost; the scene with the riddle is just perfect; and the writers have continued to be inventive about how they adapt what we know (or in Mama’s case, mostly don’t know) about Russian folklore, children’s stories and fairytales.

And at least the sheer number of people on screen includes plenty of women, some of whom are still not young.

Baba Yaga, looking fabulous in front of the hut on chicken legs in the film the Last Bogatyr 2 Root of Evil

Which makes up (a bit) for the mess the story makes of trying to square the fact that all the most effective characters are women with the fact that only men seem eligible for heroic status and that only a pissing contest with the splendidly irritating Finist the Falcon (Kirill Zaitsev) can spur Ivan to get off the metaphorical oven and prove himself.

Not that that goes very well for Ivan, mark you. Ah well, perhaps that’s the point.

On the upside, there’s a bonus whale.

Plus this time the Last Bogatyr 2 (slash Knight, slash Hero, slash Warrior), Root of Evil was sponsored not by the Southern Russia Tourism Board, but the Northern one. Who does not like lovingly-filmed shots of snow-covered landscape?

So all in all, if you were in any way entertained by (the idea of) The Last Bogatyr (slash Knight, slash Hero, slash Warrior) you should definitely entertain the thought of seeing The Last Bogatyr Root of Evil.

And luckily for Mama’s impatience levels, they seem to have cracked straight on this time with the next instalment, which intriguingly seems to be set in real life Moscow itself.

Photocredit: Mama has shamelessly used a couple of interesting pictures she found lying around on the internet to promote this Disney film, a service for which she is not receiving any form of compensation whatsoever. However, if she should not be using these pictures, she is very willing to take them down.

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Our other Russian film reviews:

The Last Bogatyr

Viy 2: Journey to China

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Zen and the Art of Making Baguettes.

Viy 2: Journey to China with a Mystery in an Iron Mask and a Dragon Seal

Picture the scene. It is autumn. The leaves are well on the turn, lending a welcome splash of colour to the iron grey skies. A faint smell of mulch sweetens the air. And it is raining. Again.

Mama likes this kind of weather. Well, she would, she is British. And every now and again she remembers that it is perfectly possible to put on some wellies and waterproofs and go into the big outdoors to admire the change of seasons. Mama was this close to ordering us out to prance around a botanical garden and look at trees.

But we are in Russia now. Rain means staying indoors and staring at the sky mournfully. Unlike minus ten and knee deep snow, obviously. That’s for sledging, gleefully, all afternoon.

Plus, we had only just recovered from the annual back to school virus. Mama’s native affinity with the water that falls out of the sky wars with her latter day training in draft avoidance and the need to swaddle any illness in seventeen layers of wool and cover it in mustard plasters.

And so she looked at the cinema listings and was lost.

Because Viy 2 was on.

Now, Mama has seen Viy. A version of Viy. The only Soviet horror film ever made of the Gothic horror story by satirical Gothic horror master, Nikolai Gogol, in fact. It hadn’t led her to believe she might need to go to the very next showing of this film, especially at premium rate prices.

But Viy 2 is less a Soviet horror film and more of what you might call an AngloRusski-Chinese martial arts mashup.

It’s got both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan in it, and much to Mama’s surprise, they have more than brief cameos. I mean, they aren’t the lead characters, but they do fight each other. At some length. In the Tower of London. Apparently this is their first ever fight sequence together. There’s a whole joke about it. That and Genghis Khan’s helmet.

The film is nominally about a British cartographer who gets sent out east from the Russian court in Moscow to map China. As you do. The tenuous connection with the original story is that it is the same British cartographer from the 2014 Viy who encountered the supernatural in a small Eastern European village (that was an AngloRusski-Ukranian production. Mama looks forward to Viy 3 and the combination that produces).

Once past the Great Wall of China, after a lengthy trek across snowbound Russia in a pimped out carriage (which we recently saw at the MosFilm Studio in the flesh), our mapmaker gets caught up in dragons, peasant rebellions, flying machines made of umbrellas, steampunk warriors, and not fewer than four fighting Chinese princesses, among sundry plucky children, BFFs and honourable triplets. Mama didn’t recognise any of the actors here, which just goes to show that she really needs to check out more Chinese cinema. Young and exceedingly limber was her overall impression.

Meanwhile, converging on China from another direction, we have Alexander Dumas, Peter the Great, a boatload of Russian sailors, and a cross dressing British lady aristocrat, played by an actress from Yekaterinburg who speaks four languages fluently, and is a master of fencing, motorbikes, horse riding and jet skis.

Although once she is outed as a woman, she does tend towards fewer greatcoats and more revealing buxomy swashbuckling attire. Mama is uncertain if she really approves of this, and also questions the truly hideous outfit they stuck the character in at the beginning too. But on the other hand, she might have been blond, but she wasn’t young, so this gets points. Particularly as her cartographer husband is also getting on a bit. He’s played by Jason Flemyng, otherwise known as him out of Lock, Stock… and didn’t he also do League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (underrated, in Mama’s opinion)?

This, incidentally, pretty much is the plot of Viy 2 in its entirety. Except for the business about how dragons’ eyelashes are responsible for really good tea. And the appearance of both Rutgar Hauer and Charles Dance. And Peter the Great steering a ship through a storm. And the small cute flying monster.

Make no mistake, it was marvellously, wonderfully, gloriously silly. Highly recommended. Not least because seeing multiple characters from multiple cultures and/or nationalities represented more or less equally on screen was something of a novelty.

No idea if it is coming to English language cinemas near you any time soon. If it is look out for it under one of the myriad names it seems to be known as. As well as Viy 2, you can find it called The Journey to China; the Mystery of the Iron Mask; Return to the Forbidden Kingdom; and in Russia it is currently billed as the Mystery of the Dragon Seal. Apparently it’s been ready to roll for a year but got into censorship trouble in China, which took a while to sort out.

This is a shame as there is great potential for our hero to mapmake his way round the whole world, and Mama for one would be very up for an AngloRusski-Bollywood combination.

Momentum has probably been irrecoverably lost, however.

If you want to read another of our Russian language film reviews, click here.

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This is what Douglas Adams himself had to say about tea in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Photocredit: Mama has shamelessly used a couple of interesting pictures she found lying around on the internet to promote this film, a service for which she is not receiving any form of compensation whatsoever. However, if she should not be using these pictures, she is very willing to take them down.