Call it a continuation, if you want, but extending The Irony of Fate into present day Russia simply doesn't work. Much of the irony was in response to life in the old USSR, but here we get an all too contemporary view of Russia (2007) with a young couple repeating virtually the same situation as in the original movie. It doesn’t help that the young actors fumble with their roles, unable to achieve the same spark that existed a generation before. The only real twist is the relationship the young couple has with the main characters, Nadya, Ippolit and Zhenya, from Ryazanov's 1975 classic. All three actors reprise their roles. Better to see the original again.
If you're like me and wondered what the hell Stalker was all about, I would suggest reading Roadside Picnic , the book on which it was nominally based. Tarkovsky took his idea from the character, Redrick Schuhart, a laboratory assistant and Harmont Branch of the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures, leaving the rest up to the imagination. The names were changed to protect the innocent. While Tarkovsky chose to shroud the story in mystery, the Strugatsky Brothers lay it out pretty clearly in their science fiction classic. Redrick, the Stalker, has gone into the zone countless times but each time represents a new set of challenges, especially with the Harmont Branch cracking down on the plundering of alien objects left behind by a visitation to a small rural town in Canada. I suppose setting the story in a place outside Russia, allowed the Strugatsky brothers more room to explore new ideas and avoid heavy censhorship, but according to Boris in t...
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