WASHINGTON, July 19 (RIA Novosti) – A new ‘mockumentary’ about a con artist who runs into all sorts of complications as he tours Russia with a rock band he’s put together, has been given sharply mixed reviews by critics.
The Hollywood Reporter panned the film, “Colossus,” calling it “stupefyingly dull” and a “colossal ego trip for its director/screenwriter/producer/star Mark Hendrickson” who plays a conman who wants to show how easy it is to fool people by creating “an artificial heavy-metal rock band which he hopes to tour across the country while making a film.”
The film’s only saving grace, according to the Hollywood Reporter, is the locations in St. Petersburg and Moscow where it was shot, including “a Khrushchev-era underground nuclear bunker that’s been turned into a private club.”
The locations paint a “realistic visual portrait” of the film’s milieu, “but much like its central character, everything else feels wholly inauthentic,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote.
The New York Times, on the other hand, called the 134-minute film “a mindblower of a mockumentary” that “will leave you reeling in the best of ways, dizzy from a rock ’n’ roll Tilt-A-Whirl that swirls with duplicity and hilarity.”
The two newspapers also differed on when the film would be released, with the Hollywood Reporter saying it would be available starting Friday, while the New York Times said it was still “awaiting release.”
