2022-02-18 00:19:36
The tape tells about the legendary departure of Dynamo Moscow to the UK, where a team, assembled partly from front-line players, beat the leading professional clubs in England, Scotland and Wales with a total score of 19:9 in a series of four friendly matches. In front of 275,000 Englishmen (in total), Soviet athletes cut a path for the national Football Federation to FIFA, showing the whole world that the people, exhausted by the war, are ready to build a full-fledged peaceful life, where there is a place for big sport.
November 1945 USSR champion FC Dynamo rushes on a small plane to Foggy Albion to clash with the strongest football players in the world. The team is led into battle by Mikhail Yakushin (Pavel Trubiner, known from the TV series Velikaya, Rossiya Hotel), a coach who has experience playing with the British. The team was reinforced by the football player of the CDK club Vsevolod Bobrov (Makar Zaporozhsky, known from the TV series “Method”, “Trigger”) – an individualist who does not want to fit into the team of rivals in the home championship.
Meanwhile, the British are preparing to meet the Russians not only on the football fields, but also in the newspapers. Abby is a journalist for one of the publications and part-time girlfriend of Chelsea’s leading player Tommy Lawton. For the sake of a series of fascinating articles about the visit of Soviet football players to Britain, she decides to fall in love with the best Dynamo player. After the first game, the choice of the young predator falls on Vsevolod Bobrov…
In order to balance the great-power pathos, the director, known for the film “Crimea” (the plot is based on the events of 2014), was invited by the authors of the script to the scandalous Ural brothers-playwrights – Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov (known for the plays “Playing a Victim”, “Sexual coating”, “Casting”). Apparently paying tribute to the program “Man and the Law” (Pimanov is known as its host), the scriptwriters strengthened the football theme of the detective component and polished it with melodrama.
Opera gangsters, eager to raise money on bets, are on the heels of Soviet athletes, trying to bribe, then poison, then kill, without succeeding, however, in any of the disciplines. Significantly slow down the development of amorous scenes, knocking down the pace of the story. Artless seduction by an Englishwoman of Russian origin of a Soviet striker, whose icy passion suddenly flares up out of the blue – all this causes only bewilderment. As a result, the chatter of a scout reporter and the awkward movements of puppet mafiosi cement the story of the unique success of domestic football on the world stage.
Following the formula “A beautiful movie about beautiful people”, Pimanov creates a glossy fairy tale based on real events through the eyes and hands of a magician operator Maxim Shinkorenko. Marvelous landscapes, taken from a bird’s eye view, and warm wooden interiors in the soft light of lamps are pleasing to the eye. Light jazz music creates a relaxed atmosphere, and football players in chic blue coats look like haute couture models. All this is damn cute, but it has nothing to do with the real story taken as the basis of the film. And for this story, in particular, state and near-state financing of the picture was probably received (from the Cinema Fund and the Ministry of Defense, the project was also supported by VTB Bank).
It is a pity that, instead of telling a true story, rich in incredible destinies and juicy texture, the authors of the film took the path of fiction, delving into a fictional love story with a criminal flavor, unfolding against the backdrop of sports battles. Not disclosed, for example, the front-line fate of football players, deserving at least a mention, but in fact not even awarded flashbacks. For example, not a word is said in the picture about the fact that during the war the legend of Dynamo Konstantin Beskov was a fighter of a separate motorized rifle brigade for special purposes, participated in the defense of Moscow.
Well, what about the viewer? Will a film with a multi-million dollar budget (the creators did not disclose its exact size) manage to bring to cinemas an audience that has become accustomed to two years of covid restrictions on going to the cinema? If we compare the performance of sports dramas of the past years – “Move Up” and “Streltsov”, then the promising success of “Eleven Silent Men” is likely to be closer to the football drama “Streltsov” than to the basketball triumph of “Movement”.
“Movement Up” already at the start of the rental showed an excellent result – 24 million rubles. on the day of release (hereinafter – the data of the UAIS of the State Film Fund), and the box office of 110 million rubles. on the first weekend, it became a good harbinger of enchanting financial success – over the entire period of the rental, the picture collected more than 3 billion rubles. The film “Streltsov” collected 17 million rubles on the day of release, and on the first weekend it raised the bar to 112 million rubles, which was quite comparable to the indicators of a basketball hit. As a result, Streltsov left the treadmill at around 355 million rubles. “Eleven Silent Men” on the first day of hire managed to earn about 6 million rubles. Even with a good sundress from viewers who appreciate a delicious image and a touching atmosphere in the frame, the film has little chance of blowing up the domestic box office.
For two years, the viewer has lost the habit of going to the cinema, and the restrictions of 50% occupancy of the halls have not yet been canceled. The absence of stars of the first magnitude in the film may affect the attendance of the sessions – it’s no secret that the first and highest-grossing weekend of Streltsov was provided by fans of Alexander Petrov. Football fans, disappointed by the performance of the national team at the last European Championship, are unlikely to go to the cinema to watch the outstanding achievements of football players of the past.
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