White Gold (2004) User Reviews

A contender for the top spot in IMDb Bottom 100 list

[_Sergey_ · 1/10 · 2 August 2004]

Almost nothing is good about this movie. Bad plot, bad directing, bad casting, stupid idea for a movie, executed the worst possible way. I was watching it with one thought on my mind throughout the whole movie: "Have I gone crazy, or a movie can actually be THIS bad???"

The screen play writer and the director should be banned from making movies ever again. Period.

There are two good parts to this movie: good Russian stunt work and a great Russian actor ensemble lured in by good (for Russian market) pays. The latter may contradict with my prior statement "bad casting", but there is an explanation. The Russian actors involved in this movie are all great; however the movie is not worth their presence from the artistic point of view.

This movie is an example of the critical situation in Russian movie industry: good directors rarely have access to decent budgets for decent movie productions. Bad wannabe directors and producers with connections are able to secure good financing, they produce bad movies and the big (in Russian terms) budgets bring them a lot of hype. Russia does not make movies these days as good as 15 or more years ago.

Summary: bad movie, 0 out of 10, not worth wasting your time on it, even for fans of some great Russian actors involved.

They shoot bad actors don't they

[The_Pc · 1/10 · 2 February 2005]

I agree with Sergey, it's amazing they even let this one appear on DVD. I have seen worse but barely. Bad acting, crappy plot, not even worth half the 2 euros the DVD cost. Some of the Russian actors performed as well as an average A-team episode, but the amateurs portraying Americans should be sent to Siberia. Also include the sound guys to the Siberia express. You have to be a real expert to keep the microphone well on screen and still manage to get an unbalanced and crappy soundtrack. The stunt guys are the only ones keeping this one star disaster from reaching the bottom of the cinematographic ladder. The action looks more probable and real than similar US movies. As a CD promoting travel to Russia it might have more success than as an adventure movie. The advice is, steer clear of this DVD unless you want to use it as a coaster or offer it to your mother in law for Christmas.

Technically Competent but with a useless plot

[claudeh-1 · 1/10 · 29 January 2006]

This is my first post. This movie has some good car chase scenes but there are other things that are simply amateurish. The soundtrack was not 100% in sync with the video. I at first thought it was dubbed but after re-playing some scenes I realized that it is just poor workmanship. There are some good chase scenes in and around Moscow (and good driving). The English subtitles for the Russian dialogs sometimes contain grammar errors in particular in some verbs. I gave the movie a low grade because the people who made it could have done better even if they had a limited budget. The players, stunt men and all the other staff are Russian and I have seen other Russian movies that were much better than this one. The plot seems to be simply pointless. Besides showing some old footage from movies of the 1910/1920 era there is no logical explanation (for me anyway) of how Vlad's great grandfather was able to get out of Russia with a map and other information concerning the gold heist. This is in stark contrast with other historical Russian events. The GRU and KGB controlled everything in Russia for about 50 years. Those guys may not have been nice but they used their iron fisted control techniques to enslave an entire population. I don't see how Vlad's great-grandfather could have escaped the unwanted attention of the GRU/KGB harboring a secret as important as the Gold heist's whereabouts. Old series B pirate films used the phrase "dead men tell no tales". The KGB folks applied that principle scrupulously.

The spectacular Siberian scenery alone is enough to recommend this movie.

[cwz · 8/10 · 8 September 2004]

It's not often moviegoers get to see such contrasting views of Siberian Russia - endless forest, dingy rooms, ATM machines and crappy helicopters - but they

bring a level of reality to this film. The director is clearly strong on action and weak on working with actors (the American bit players are truly dreadful) but some of the performances by the Russian actors are quite good and Tatyana

Meshcherkina is both beautiful and talented. Kudos to the writers for letting some scenes play in Russian with English subtitles instead of the usual heavy accented stereotypes, (of which there are a few in this film). This is a great story that could have used a stronger directing hand but has a lot to recommend it in scenery and action.

An interesting look at the real (scary) Russia

[lesabsintheurs · 8/10 · 16 January 2006]

Ivanov's stunt coordinating work on The Bourne Supremacy was truly spectacular, and he clearly has a talent for action scenes as evidenced in White Gold. But he can't direct actors. As the other comments said, the directing is wanting, and some of the actors are really terrible.The scenery however is great and the story is fascinating. The basis of the story is true (the missing gold of the White Army) and this makes for an interesting plausible adventure. Check it out if you want to see what Siberia is really like. I also like that the actors are actually speaking Russian instead of with bad "Russian" accents. There are a few good performances however and the girl is beautiful and talented. It seems like they started with a good script but didn't quite deliver. Well worth a look.

horrible technicals failures but nice story

[bazanar · 16 March 2004]

Well as the summary said. It have a good story. but really horrible technical mistakes like seeing the boom microphone in 4 different takes. Also some lousy acting from different actors, like both FBI agent's or the black friend of the leading actor. But aside the technical mistakes of this movie and some really lousy acting. The story itself really traps you (also enhanced with original footage from WWII), makes u wanted to see the end of it. The realism wich are described how things works in Rusia, the chase, the footage of Actual rusia, The lousy room of a family Hotel. Make this movie worth to see't. at least by a producer so he do a remake