A Rough Draft is a 2018 Russian fantasy science fiction thriller about a young man’s life that gets erased over mere hours and put into the position of a customs officer in an alternate realm.
A Rough Draft (Russian: Chernovik) is based on a Russian novel of the same name by Sergey Lukyanenko. Kirill (Nikita Volkov) is a genius video game designer whose new idea has set him apart from the rest, yet suddenly, he comes home to find it taken over by a mysterious woman (Severija Janusauskaite). In the following hours, his life as he knew it disappears and he soon realizes that he has been wiped from the memory of everyone that he knows. With no job, homeless and accused of murder, he gets a message to go to a location that turns out to be a customs office to other realms and he gets introduced to his new job as an interdimensional guard.
There are many rules to this work but he imbued with new abilities and is now immortal. On top of that, he also meets his ex-girlfriend Anna (Olga Borovskaya), who doesn’t remember him either and so he decides to try and reboot their relationship. Of course, things go array as the job and life he wants don’t align, and when Anna is taken away, he goes off to try and find her in the other realms.
There are a lot of imaginative and unique elements in A Rough Draft. Looking at the world through Kirill’s point of view as he goes to the different realms makes for a great fantasy and sci-fi story. The new worlds are filmed beautifully and meticulously to show their different environments and eras in time. Each realm has its purpose, similar to District 13 of The Hunger Games, which has an unknown mystery realm hosting plenty of rumors. The contrast of the brighter realms versus the more sombre ones makes for some unique moments, with one of the most outstanding watching Matryoshka dolls turn into violent drones. Now, there’s some next level creativity of blending in a bit of the Russian culture.
The downside of A Rough Draft is its story, perhaps because it is an adaptation that it needs a little more time to brew, the complexity of the world and the realms needing more attention to simply show how everything works. The movie doesn’t completely demonstrate the world-building enough to reveal even the simplest things of why and how Kirill got his powers or how certain things somehow turned out well when previous situations proved otherwise. There is a lot of discrepancy here and it creates some disjointed and confusing moments that disconnects the story from the audience, especially maybe for those who haven’t been exposed to the novel.
Director Sergey Mokritskiy‘s A Rough Draft is a creative experience full of fanciful ideas, and visually, it’s a beautiful film. However, the execution is lacking. For fans of the source material, the ending does hint that the movie may have a sequel. Let’s hope a few lessons are learned. Either way, a solid is wary recommendation.