Starring: Grigoriy Dobrygin, Ekaterina Vilkova, Viktor Verzhbitskiy
Directors: Aleksandr Voytinskiy & Dmitriy Kiselev
Certificate: PG
Duration: 1 hour and 46 minutes
Format: Blu-ray / DVD
Dima (Grigoriy Dobrygin) is a young student. His friends are cooler than him and he has no chance with the latest lady in his life, who fancies his friend instead. That is until his life literally turns upside down when he discovers the battered old Volga car that his father gave to him as a birthday present can fly. However in a twist of fate, not unlike that of Peter Parker’s, Uncle Ben being killed, Dima is deeply upset when his father is killed by a thug who he himself could have stopped. But Dima was so caught up in his new life that he didn’t even phone an ambulance when he was told someone was hurt. When he finds out that it was his father he makes a commitment to use his car’s newly found super powers to help the innocent. Armed with the car’s hidden Cold War technology, Dima reinvents himself as the mysterious crime fighter known as Black Lightning, Moscow’s saviour. So he sets out to help people but finds that he comes up against a corrupt industrialist, who also wants Dima’s incredible car – and the mighty power source that it contains – to use it for evil. It seems as though he will stop at nothing to get what he wants even if it means killing Dima and probably destroying the city as well.
The storyline is not too bad. Sure it’s a little clichéd but so are all super hero stories these days and here at least we have the addition of a super-powered car. But the visual effects are lousy. Moscow looks great though, the skyline looks fantastic and a flying car is a great way to advertise the wonders of this amazing city.
The direction is passable and the acting is reasonable. Over all Black Lightening is better than you might expect but still falls down in places because it’s so corny. The love story between Dima and Nastya (Ekaterina Vilkova) is interesting. And their acting is good.
Over all Black Lightning isn’t going to rival the best that Hollywood can produce, it’s not going to worry them at all, but I can still imagine that this is the sort of film that could become a bit of a cult classic. Something made easier by the fact that the film also has an English language soundtrack, which is great if you don’t like subtitles to spoil your enjoyment of a film. It’ll also make it far more accessible to its target audience, which I can only assume are teenagers and young adults.
Black Lightning looks good on Blu-ray, the colours are good and the image is clear but I’m not sure if it’s likely to be a huge improvement over the DVD. I suppose it depends how much you like the smaller blue boxes over the old DVD boxes on your shelves I suppose!
