The director Fiodor Bondarchuk seems himself to be under the influence of the dangerous "A-rays", declaring unconditional faithfulness to the letter on the original Book, and not paying any attention to how it plays out as a film.
The book has all the elements needed for a Star Wars-like scenario: it creates a complete detailed world full with its history ("Noon Universe"); it has a number of mysteries that are gradually revealed to the reader - "I'm your father, Luke!" type moments and more. It has a number of philosophical connotations about historical necessities and taking responsibility for people's destiny. It is an epic masterpiece.
But! The authors of the 1968 book didn't think about turning it into a sci-fi movie. The majority of the book is written from the view point of its heroes, describing their feelings and thoughts. Dialogue and action takes secondary role.
So this book was taken and stripped off of any and all non-action language, and turned into a scenario. The result is extremely fast-paced, bullet-point-like re-telling of the main events of the book.
The act is horrible across the board. Of special notice is Koldun (Enchanter), which is all about the voice. This is the voice that reads out what can be thought as A. & B. Strugatsky's (ABS) actual position on the main dilemma. This voice is delivering one of the main messages of the film. The movie creators recognized that, and turned the Koldun scene into a separate scene, as opposed to being part of the "Meeting". But the voice is absolutely unremarkable, and just quickly reads through the text.
As a side note - the Bomber is just pathetic. The bomber itself is not significant altogether, and could be just left out. But it was left in, and instead of a complex technical scene involving a large airplane, the creators opted for a cheaper CG solution. This is strange to say the least, given the $40M budget of the film.
