No spoilers here, but if you want to watch a movie about Chernobyl.. don't waste your time. Every event, and the timeline itself, is fabricated. There's not an ounce of historical truth here, but plenty of made up drama. Skip, and watch the vastly, vastly superior HBO Series.
Plot summary
Chernobyl: The Abyss is the first major Russian feature film about the aftermath of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, when hundreds of people sacrificed their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe, and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. The unlikely hero of the film is Alexey, a fireman at the power station. He is accompanied by Valery, an engineer, and Boris, a military diver, on a perilous mission to drain water from a reservoir under the burning reactor. They have no time for proper planning; water in the flooded corridors they will have to traverse is getting hotter by the hour as the molten reactor core seeps ever closer. Prepared to sacrifice their own lives in order to prevent an even greater catastrophe, the three men descend into the depths of the reactor building.
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Director
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1.22 GB
1280*534
Russian 2.0
NR
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
A cheap imitation of the vastly superior HBO Series
Reviewed by
Boiling soup on brittle bones...
This 2021 movie titled "Chernobyl" (aka "Chernobyl: Abyss") actually felt like a very, very unnecessary movie to have been made. Why? Well, because the story has been told many times before in other movies or TV series, and often with more impact and entertainment value.
Well sure, I will say that if you haven't seen other movies or TV series that deal with the tragedy that took place with the Chernobyl power plant, then sure this 2021 movie will provide adequate, if not actually good, entertainment. I will give that much credit to writers Elena Ivanova and Aleksey Kazakov, sure.
The storyline told in "Chernobyl" was one that I was well familiar with already, as I am no newcomer to movies or TV series that depict the events that took place on April 26th, 1986, and the aftermath in its wake. So because of that, then this 2021 movie felt sort of obsolete and wholly unnecessary.
The acting in the movie was good, and I can't claim to be familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, as I am not well-traversed in the Russian cinema. But the people cast for the various roles definitely did good jobs in bringing the characters to life.
And the atmosphere in the movie was definitely good as well, adding a lot to the movie in overall.
My rating of director Danila Kozlovskiy's 2021 movie "Chernobyl" lands on a very bland and mediocre five out of ten stars. This was definitely a watchable movie, but for us that are already well-familiar with cinematic representations of the accident, then this movie was just not delivering where it mattered.
Reviewed by
Personal and Propaganda
Now I think it is safe to say, that after the HBO drama, there had to be a response or a movie that tried to show things ... a bit differently. Do not try to compare the series with this if you can. The movie will lose out for sure.
Politics are thrown out (mostly, maybe if you are good willing you are able to see some small references) and it is all about the personal journey of 3 main characters - a "family" of sorts. Now I do not know what they were based on and I read there are many things that are anything but accurate. Having said that, if you suspend your disbelief and go with the flow you'll be able to enjoy the movie.
Well enjoy may be too strong of a word. There is enough tension from start to finish - although it does take a few moments ... or an introduction to the characters before it goes on. There are quite a few things that bugged me, but overall the movie worked and I was there with the characters. Again, it will depend how willing you are to suspend your disbelief ... otherwise you may not want to watch this at all.