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Luchshe, Chem Lyudi 16
Better Than Us 16
Russia 2019
produced by Andrey Dzhunkovskiy, Eduard Iloyan, Alexander Kessel, Vitaliy Shlyappo, Ruslan Sorokin, Mikhail Tkachenko, Aleksey Trotsyuk, Denis Zhalinskiy for Yellow, Black & White/Netflix
directed by Andrey Dzhunkovskiy
starring Paulina Andreeva, Kirill Käro, Aleksandr Ustyugov, Olga Lomonosova, Eldar Kalimulin, Vitaliya Kornienko, Vera Panfilova, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Fyodor Lavrov, Mariya Lugovaya, Kirill Polukhin, Pavel Vorozhtsov, Victor Solovyev, Irina Tarannik, Viktoriya Korlyakova
created by Alexander Kessel, written by Alexander Dagan
TV series Better Than Us
review by Mike Haberfelner
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After what has happened last
episode, of course Cronos wins the bid and gets financing for the
Arisa series of bots - which puts Cronos CEO Victor (Aleksandr Ustyugov)
with his back to the wall, as Cronos lacks the facilities to mass-produce
such a complex bots, even if he has always claimed otherwise - so he and
his muscle Gleb (Fyodor Lavrov) decide to blow up the Cronos factory floor
during the official ceremony and blame it on the Liquidators. To that end,
Gleb kidnaps Jeanne (Vera Panfilova), sister of the incarcerated leader of
the Liquidators Bars (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) and forces her to drive a truck
into the factory, threatening her brother's life should she not comply.
Jeanne's boyfriend Egor (Eldar Kalimulin) has been looking for her, and
somehow finds himself in the truck with all the explosives. In the
meantime, Igor (Pavel Vorozhtsov), Victor's right hand man, has found a
way to block the memory of the original Arisa (Paulina Andreeva), and she
now believes herself to be Victor's bot rather than Georgy's (Kirill
Käro), whichis alright with Georgy, as he thinks that washes him clean of
the whole affair ... until he learns where Egor, his son, is, and then he
races to the rescue with his police friend Varlamov (Kirill Polukhin), who
come just in time to save Egor and Jeanne, while Arisa, who hasn't
forgotten Georgy after all, jumps into the explosive-loaded truck and
drives it out of harm's way to save the day, before dying a heroine's dead
when it goes up. And in the end, everybody gets their just desserts. This
series finale is, I'm afraid to say, a bit of a let-down to everything
that has built up - and rather expertly built up to be sure. It's just
rather disappointing that after all that work, everything just goes up in
a bang and Arisa, who has been built up so morally ambivalent, is
suddently allowed to die a heroine's death. Also, over the series,
Victor's motives have become more and more murky, and this episode is even
more proof of that. And Egor's narrative threads is carried more by
coincidence than anything else. Also, the episode spends up a lot of time
after the finale to really force-feed the audience how everything is
resolved, but fails to resolve (or even touch upon) the more philosophical
questions the series has been asking, like what if bots are indeed
"better than us"? A bit of a shame, really, because especially
the early episodes of the series were excellent (and still well worth a
look in hindsight), so would have earned more than just end on a bang that
turns out to be a narrative fizzle.
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