Kyanq u Kriv (2016) Reviews

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  galstyankarotik-18-2962422017-04-15

  I was serving in the military when I first heard about this movie, and being an aspiring Armenian filmmaker, I was reaaaally excited. Now, if you follow Armenian entertainment industry, you may have noticed that almost all of the recent feature films were comedies. The number one reason is that it's cheap to shoot a comedy. You don't need explosions, intense action sequences, cutting-edge CGI, great narrative with larger than life characters and so on and so forth. All of these things cost money. And if you want to make your cinematography compelling, intelligent and down-to the point, then you will need a lot of resources and a great cast and crew consisting of people, who know what they are doing and do it the right way. Even though you cannot compare Armenian cinema to that of Hollywood, this movie can serve as a benchmark, for us to compare and contrast war drama movies. Without a further ado, let's break this down and review this movie. -Pacing: The movie felt rushed. Some of the scenes were unrelated and could have been deleted. Several scenes needed more emphasis, like the action scene in the church. The plot twists related to the snitch needed to be more elaborate and suspenseful. But, all in all, pacing doesn't break the success of the movie. In fact, Mger Mkrtchyan has done a great job to make the plot development as naturally fluent as possible and enough credit needs to be given to the man. - Action Sequences: Really well handled. Nice wide shots, medium shots of combat sequences with high shutter speed, efficient usage of drone footage, intelligent use of steadicam as well as "shaky- cam". Compelling explosions and gunshots(I believe they might have even used real gun shots). -Lighting: Nice, but sometimes overdone with excessive usage of high fill light. -Story and Dialogues: You could really see that the story was affected by the pacing. There was so much to be shown, but there were was so little time, which hindered character development. -CGI: Not your bad-ass, top-notch CGI, but still competent and efficient(cannot say the same about higher-budget Russian pathetic attempts to compete with Hollywood). -Score and OST: I didn't like that it was heavily dependent on string instruments which successfully evoke emotions of nostalgic grief, loss and sorrow. This movie is about triumph and great tragedy, as in case of many other war dramas. But I would like to hear more of epicness, as this is a film about Heroes. Heroes, who have gifted Peace to our nation! Overall, I liked the movie; acting was incredibly good for most of the actors, pacing felt a bit rushed, cinematography and CGI were excellent, costume choice and locations were perfect, the plot was great. I would say this deserves to be watched on big screen and I would give 9 out of 10 to "The Line". Thanks to Mger Mkrtchyan for this incredibly successful attempt to tell a difficult story in a nice and beautiful way. I'd really like to be a part of something this big and important.

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