MOSCOW ZERO

C0NTAINS S0ME SP0ILERS

Zero is right, frankly. Zero is all it's worth. I can't actually give it zero stars, though: it's a scale of one to five and it gets one just for turning up. Mutiny On The Buses got one star and we all know how poo that was. If this film consisted of nothing but three hours of a nude Seth Rogen setting fire to kittens in slow motion it would get one star. To a reggae soundtrack. And as grim as that sounds, it might still have been slightly more fun than this dreary multi-ethnic DTV plod through the dark.

In Moscow Zero, Rade Serbedzija has gone missing while exploring the hidden catacombs under Moscow; Vincent Gallo and Joaquim De Almeida go down to look for him, having been pointed in the right direction by Joss Ackland and given permission by Val Kilmer! Because somewhere down there are the Gates Of Hell (and oh, how we could do with Lucio Fulci in prime crumbly zombie mode to liven things up) along with invisible demons. Or ghosts. Or schoolgirls. Cue about forty-three hours of people wandering around in tunnels and finding each other, losing each other, solving puzzles and looking for the Gates Of Hell.

Quite why anyone would want to find the Gates Of Hell in the first place is anyone's guess. If they actually exist, and you know where they are, the smart thing to do would be to seal them shut with about thirty tons of steel-reinforced concrete. Instead we get a bunch of people stumbling aimlessly about in badly photographed caverns and underground churches, and going round in circles while Val Kilmer waits for the right moment to block the catacombs off forever. (Why wasn't that done centuries ago?) This is utter nonsense and more crucially it's absolutely no fun; it's a slow and unexciting movie, most of which takes place in the dark so unless you're watching it with the lights off you can't even see anything. Very poor.

*

Less than zero: