The only modern Russian film I can label a total failure (given it was directed by Khotinenko, formerly the leader of 1980s Russian intellectual cinema).
Nothing and nobody worked well in this piece of crap. How can one shoot a film which is a total disaster given the best opportunities provided: Ennio Morricone as a music composer, Chulpan Khamatova (the best Russian cinema actress (along with Ingeborga Dapkunaite)) as a leading female hero, enormous funds of Russia's Channel One, good (meaning cheap:) connections with the military allowing to use resources of the Russian Navy, and a plenty of good examples of "submarine movies"?
It is almost impossible to make a bad submarine movie nowadays given the stunning (e.g. Das Boot by Wolfgang Petersen) or simply good like "K-19" or "U-571" sub film examples. "72m" even employs some citations from Das Boot which means that somebody from the film crew has seen that film:)) - however, ineffectively.
One might argue this was the first experience of a "blockbuster" film by contemporary Russian TV producers - I regret they have not realized that they should better shoot their TV-series crap than to spoil the perception of the great Russian cinema. I mean the great Russian directors like Eisenstein, Kozintsev, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Klimov, Tarkovsky, etc. just whirl in their coffins when somebody tries to judge about the Russian cinema thinking of the "72 meters".
The same producers later delivered the "Night Watch" - an evenly questionable, though better shot, piece of film. So there is some hope for Russian viewers - maybe the Channel One (ORT) producers in a dozen of films will learn what they had to learn at a film school which nobody of them have attended.
Please do not waste your time or money. 0/10.
