Paragraph 78 Review

The Russian military has a problem. A secret research laboratory working illegally creating viruses for use in war has gone silent. Normal communications have ended abruptly with the only sound emerging coming in the form of an emergency beacon on a public channel – a major problem since it could draw international attention to a lab which is not supposed to exist. Clearly something has gone wrong and what, exactly, that is needs to be discovered and contained as quickly as possible but regular troops can’t be used since that would leave behind a potentially incriminating paper trail. The solution? An off the books, specialized unit disbanded years before is reassembled and sent in. They don’t exist in any of the records and so are perfect for the military’s purposes. What does not officially exist cannot incriminate and they are also, ultimately, fully expendable should the situation fall into the worst case scenario. It does, of course. The experimental virus has mutated and escaped, killing off the research crew. There is no known antidote and the team sent in to mop up the mess are themselves infected leaving them only hours to live.

So. What Paragraph 78 is not is any sort of conventional action film. The only enemy here is the virus itself, an invisible killer. What the film actually is is a character study of the relationship and tensions within the group and how those escalate once the pressure is on – escalating to the point where the decide that since they are about to die anyway they may as well hasten the process by hunting each other down in a sort of tournament. The futuristic element never comes into play, we never see the effects of the virus in the soldiers, the is purely about the human response to extreme pressure.

On a technical level the film – like everything to come out of producer Joseph Bakshiev’s MB Productions thus far – is fantastic. It is exceptionally well shot and constructed, with a very solid cast. When the action sequences do kick in they are inventive and engaging, with one sequence in particular coming across as a crunchier version of the gun-kata employed by Christian Bale in Equilibrium. Perhaps even more importantly the action sequences do an admirable job of exposing the different characters’ personalities.

The question, though, is whether people will have the patience to get to those action sequences. Released in Russia as two feature length films – the first focused on the set up and initial character work, the second on the more action oriented material – it has been cut down into a single two hour and ten minute feature for international audiences. Even with the reductions the film probably needs to get to the infection fifteen minutes or so earlier than it does as it currently stands. Good casting or no the early going is very much dialogue driven, filled with bluster as the soldiers trade jokes and barbs with one another and the rhythm of this sort of verbal back and forth never translates particularly well into subtitles, which is definitely the case here. Verbal sparring is about personality rather than literal content and content is all that the translation really gives you. Throw in some specifically Russian jokes and cultural references and you have a film that will be difficult going for a casual western audience looking for an action fix.