So, we're supposed to believe that four Americans -- Sean (Emile Hirsch), his buddy Ben (Max Minghella), Anne (Rachael Taylor), and her personal assistant Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) -- and a Swedish guy named "Skyler" (Joel Kinnaman) are going to coincidentally be in the same bar in Moscow at the same time when aliens land and attack for mineral resources? My ass. Moscow is HUGE -- I've never been and it's common knowledge that it is not a one-saloon town. These people hold up in the bar's basement and come out after spending almost five days with each other. When they come out they make their way to nowhere in particular, wandering about and getting into close scrapes with the alien menace.
In their wanderings, they learn that the aliens can see creatures due to natural bio-electricity, and cannot see through glass (because it's an insulator.) The INVISIBLE ALIENS can also be detected by laying down electrical devices -- they killed all the electricity in the city, they are the only source of it and give it off like dead skin. When the streetlights come on, you better be on the way home. While still out, they meet up with other survivors like Vika (Veronika Ozerova) and her mad scientist friend Sergei (Dato Bakhtadze). On another jaunt, they meet up with the heavily-armored Alien Fighters led by Yuri (Artur Smolyaninov), who are able to weaken an alien to the point where they can kill it with a rocket launcher from my favorite character BORIS.
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| HALLO MY NAME BORIS I SHOOT ROCKET |
BORIS (played by Vladimir Jaglich) has no lines. He just shoots rockets. And that's all that matters.
Along the way, supporting actors die and a way is found to escape the carnage of Moscow for equally ruined parts of Earth. The movie ends on an obviously dead note, promising a retaliatory response in the form of "This is how it begins". I would have enjoyed the movie a bit better if this was in the same vein as Night Watch and Day Watch -- sci-fi movies with an all-Russian cast to better make sense of the movie as a whole.
Why attack Earth for mineral resources when there are probably plenty of mineral-rich asteroids floating in space that don't have people who can develop microwave cannons to disrupt your shielding and kill you with rockets? Then again, why would aliens who are allergic to water come to conquer a planet that's 75% water (Signs) or fail to do the research about microorganisms (War of the Worlds - almost all versions)? It comes down to a simple fact: we want to win when we would most certainly lose (see Battle: Los Angeles). In that way, The Darkest Hour is the "feel-good movie of the year."
