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Movie Review: Sputnik

Mike Tyrkus

The intense, often nerve-wracking, yet thoroughly enjoyable genre film Sputnik is also the debut for Russian director Egor Abramenko. This is a film that sports echoes of other classics of the horror/science fiction ilk like Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), or even John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (1982). Abramenko, however, displays a singular style with an impressive first feature that portends potentially greater things yet to come.

The film first introduces young doctor Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina) who has been summoned before a medical review board for her less-than-orthodox treatment techniques (despite their success) and may have her license revoked. Her maverick spirit, however, intrigues the Russian military who asks her to consult on a case involving recently returned from space cosmonaut Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov) who seems to have developed a particularly nasty symbiotic condition that manifests itself in the shrouded darkness of the night. Of course, the military appears to want to weaponize the newly discovered alien and it falls to Tatiana to rescue Konstantin from the parasite living inside him and the government set on similarly controlling him.

As a first-time director, Abramenko displays a deft hand when directing the confining scenes that establish the prison-like hospital environment that Konstantin is being kept in. This succeeds it setting the tone of the film early on and that control of mood is never relinquished. There is also an ease with which the story moves along from scene to scene that never grows to plodding or forced. Despite the need to read subtitles (unless, of course, you understand Russian), the film moves along at a brisk pace that never allows anything to get to mundane or tedious. There is always something going on here, whether it’s in the background or just behind one of the character’s eyes.

Fedor Bondarchuk and Oksana Akinshina in “Sputnik.”

As Tatiana, Akinshina keeps her true motivations close to the vest and never seems to reveal what she is actually thinking (perhaps that just a product of growing up in the culture that she did), but it serves the character and the story well allowing for at least one rewarding reveal that champions her character throughout the whole of the piece. Similarly, Fyodorov does a spectacular job as the hero that one could view as doomed from the start (should one be of the cynical variety). Both Akinshina and Fyodorov work well together and this allows the script by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev to develop the heroes of the film as well as substantial villains, such as Fedor Bondarchuk’s Semiradov, the head of the facility where Konstantin is being kept.

Although there is more present in here than a simple alien-gone-rogue-while-the-military-chases-it-down story, that element does exists (at least to a certain extent) and the skill with which it is told is what separates Sputnik from other lesser films within the genre.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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