Too much of everything

Don't listen to the negative reviews

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

There are good movies, and there are bad movies, and then there's Moscow Zero, a film so utterly bad it makes spending a month in solitary with an insurance salesman an attractive entertainment alternative.With an incomprehensible plot about the gates of Hell opening within a labyrinth of tunnels under Moscow, the film is a mess of repetitive and nonsensical shots of a little girl running through tunnels, red lights floating about, and strange wall shadows, none of which serves to mount any fear or tension, but instead elicits the reaction of "here they go again with the girl (or lights)" from the viewer.Directed by María Lidón, who for reasons I can only conclude as shame, was billed as Luna, the movie stars Vince Gallo as Owen, an American priest who travels to Moscow in search of Sergei (Rade Serbedzija), a friend and colleague who has gone missing in the tunnels. He enlists the help of a series of locals who, with the exception of Oksana Akinshina, are all portrayed by Spanish actors trying with limited success to inflect Russian accents.Along the way they cross paths with members of some sort of underground leather-coated religious mafia headed by a portly Val Kilmer, whose career seems to be in such free fall that he's resorted to appearing in dreck like this, and henchman Sage Stallone (Sly's son), who seems to have been cast merely so the Stallone name can be included in the film's marquee.Apart from watching the troupe try to navigate their way through the tunnels with the aid of a comically drawn map, and repetitive shots of them being followed or eluded by a pale faced young girl, not much else goes on throughout. Dialogue routinely switches between English and Russian, with actors frequently taking turns in each language, and entire conversations are uttered half in one and half in the other with the only apparent reason being they felt like it, adding a frustrating dimension for the viewer, over and above trying to figure out the crazily cobbled together story.About the only thing Moscow Zero gets right, however, is its title, which could only have rendered a more accurate description of this movie if the word Moscow had been omitted.

Sit in your basement with the light out for an hour and a half. That's about the same as watching this subterranean search for the Devil's door. An American researcher Owen(Vincent Gallo)travels to Moscow and gathers a rescue team to search for his friend Sergei(Rade Serbedzia), an archaeologist who has disappeared in the catacombs beneath Russia's capital city. They will be shocked to discover subterranean dwellers thriving in the dank and dark complex system of caves and tunnels. The searchers will come upon the gatekeeper of Hell, Andrey(Val Kilmer), and will strike a deal to continue their venture; only to succeed in being scared almost witless when realizing they are among walking dead. Also in the cast: Joaquin de Almedia, Oksana Akinshina, Sage Stallone, Joss Ackland and Julio Perillan.

It seems that there is great potential for the story line of this film to be something worth watching. The acting was flat and the story lacked depth. There was too much reliance on camera work, which had some high points. I have to agree with the other negative comments. I only wish I had read them before buying the DVD. The film may be worth watching for free and you are bored to tears before hand. There could have been a lot more plot development with why there are homeless in Moscow (i.e. post-Soviet 'capitalism', rampant drug usage (i.e. increased heroin trafficking from Afghanistan); more development of why the resurgence of Russian Orthodoxy after the fall of the U.S.S.R.; the archaeologists themselves; or even more into the struggle against nihilism.

I was hooked in by the premise that the show was about demons. From hell. And a doorway to hell. What I didn't realize was that I would be watching some guys run around tunnels chased by small children who may / may not have been demons for the entire movie. Sure there was some dialogue in between, and great underground scenery but the lack of a plot, developed characters, any twists or development in the story at all was sorely lacking. Oh, and out of interest, there were no special effects. The entire budget was spent on actors salaries, sets and lots of time running around with a camera underground.The ending was one of the typical lackluster boring endings that makes you say "I endured this film of boredom for that!?" If you want to see demons and a doorway to hell, I promise you that you would be better off served watching the trailers to the game Hellgate : London which while shorter than this movie at 5 minutes, pack more dialogue, character development, action, plot and satisfying conclusions than this.The second star is for effort, but overall a low score for failing to make a movie that stands out, and for promising in the tagline much more than what was delivered.