In 2020, the film market received a new film from Russia entitled Break (Отрыв), directed by Tigran Sahakyan. This Thriller-Survival film tells the story of a group of young people who are trapped in a ski gondola on New Year’s Eve due to an accident that jammed the gondola.

As a result, these young people have to be able to survive for days in the gondola without any help coming, considering that everyone is on a long New Year’s vacation. Can they all survive this dire scenario? Check out the reviews and synopsis below!

5 young people consisting of Katya (Irina Antoneko) with her lover Denis (Denis Kosyakov) and 3 other friends, Vika (Ingrid Olerinskaya), Kirill (Andrey Nazimov) and Roman (Mikhail Fillipov) went to the top of the mountain to celebrate the final change year there. They packed up and took some equipment with them.

This is actually Denis’s plan, to bring his girlfriend with a close friend so they can see the ski resort from above and enjoy the view of the fireworks. Initially, this threatened to be canceled because they arrived late to ride the gondola. After negotiations, they can go up the gondola.

But Denis had time to leave because his bag was missing so he was reluctant to come with his friends. Denis had asked Katya to leave but Katya didn’t want to. As a result, only Katya, Kirill, Vika and Roman left for the gondola. Meanwhile, an annoyed Denis leaves them.

At first their trip went smoothly, but then, the gondolier who was inspecting the hydraulic machine accidentally got stuck, causing him to pull an iron pipe and drop it onto the cogs. That and the gondola engine broke down so it stopped working.

The gondola stopped in the middle of the snowy mountains. They thought that it was common considering the gondola was old. They even spent New Year’s Eve from the gondola. At the same time, Roman finds Denis’s bag hidden behind the small Christmas tree they brought with him.

Kirill immediately called Denis who had returned to the inn. But Denis’ answer confused Kirill. Denis asked Katya to throw the bag away. Curious, Katya saw what was in Denis’s bag and found a ring. It turns out that Denis was about to propose to Katya on the hill and was witnessed by his friends.

Katya felt guilty because she actually wanted to end her relationship with Denis after Katya found out that she was pregnant with Denis’s child. Katya could only contemplate while waiting for help to come. Unlucky, until the next day there was no help. This made the five panic and worry that they might not survive.

Katya, Kirill, Vika and Roman tried to get help, but unfortunately, the phone signal was not picked up over the mountains. Kirill also tried to get out of the gondola and climbed onto the roof to see the situation, all around him was just the expanse of snow mountains and nothing. They really can’t go anywhere. The temperature started dropping.

When he returned to the gondola cabin, Kirill found an emergency floor door that could be opened. The man then wanted to try to get off the gondola through the door using a rope which he believed was in the gondola as an emergency kit. Everyone is looking, Katya finds it but she lies saying there is no rope.

He did that because Katya knew that Kirill’s actions were very dangerous. But Vika found the rope and was furious about why Katya lied, followed by other blasphemy from Roman. Kirill intervened and quickly got off the rope harness. When he got close and threw his skis, the snow flat beneath him gave way.

It turned out that the land they saw was a snow-covered abyss. This made Kirill panic and immediately tried to climb back up. Roman, Katya and Vika who tried to restrain Kirill using a rope attached to the iron handle of the cabin lost their balance because Kirill pulled the rope suddenly.

Everything fell & dragged Roman hanging along. Roman, who was frightened, immediately cut the ropes that bound Kirill’s body so that he fell freely. As soon as Ramon got back into the gondola, Vika was angry because Roman was already his girlfriend. He cursed at Roman while his body was injured by being pierced by a broken iron support.

Vika began to lose balance and began to weaken, her blood was rushing and nothing could stop her. The colder temperature made Vika weaker and eventually died. The increasingly chaotic situation in the gondola made Roman blame Katya for all these bad things.

Roman started attacking Katya and Katya fought back, they had a fight on the roof of the gondola, but Katya managed to get back in and locked the door so that Roman was trapped on the roof. Roman kept trying to pry open the door but it made a loud shake and made one of the gondola’s metal supports fall off.

The gondola rushed in one direction quickly and threw Roman down. This also made Katya, who was in the gondola cabin, stagger and fall and hit the metal floor until she fainted. As soon as she woke up, Katya’s hand, which had been stuck to the iron for too long, had frozen and made her seriously injured when she pulled it.

Katya tried to save herself by climbing onto the roof and hanging from the iron supporting the gondola wheels before the cabin fell into a ravine. His efforts were successful, not long after reaching the iron supports, the gondola fell. Katya started making emergency signals from the Christmas lights and the small parachute that Denis brought.

Denis, who at that time realized that his friends weren’t there even after waiting at the airport, finally returned to the resort and caught up to the gondola station. Upon arrival, Denis told what really happened. After hearing Denis’s explanation, the officer then took action.

After they took care of the body of the officer who died, they helped each other to fix the stuck engine gear. The engine was able to start again and bring the gondola back to the station so that Katya could be saved. The police and ambulance immediately came to the station and took Katya to the hospital.

The story idea is quite good even though in fact films like this have been used by many other filmmakers. However, the selection of characters makes this film a bit unreasonable. In the plot, there is a close friend of theirs, Denis, who doesn’t get on the gondola and becomes one of the survivors of the gondola disaster.

The big question for Denis is how come he, who incidentally is a close friend of Kirill, Vika, Roman and Katya’s lover, doesn’t realize that his friends don’t come home all night after saying goodbye to gondola ride? He even had time to go home alone and only realized when he was at the airport!

Most films with the survival genre like this have a basic plot that is always used and occurs repeatedly in similar films. The storyline is very predictable: a group of young people having fun then turns into a struggle for life. In a state of urgency, everyone attacks each other because they want to survive.

It could also be by focusing on the main character who is usually described as a sweet-submissive-not-adventurous girl to become the last man standing because of her greatness in realizing something dangerous and could threaten her safety; or help that should be able to come quickly takes super long and arrives at the end of the event.

One thing that often happens in Russian or Norwegian films, especially films with this kind of action-thriller genre; always have cinematics that are okay. In this 1 hour 25 minute film, we will be presented with a really cool view of a row of snowy mountains! The CGI used is really top!

In contrast to the use of the sound system which is arguably not too fun. Even though usually an exciting film like this will use sound or music that makes the audience flutter, at least it makes us feel tense too. This is really homework for the director, Tigran Sahakyan.

For you survival film lovers, there’s nothing wrong with including the film Break (Отрыв) on your weekend movie list. As already informed above, the storyline is quite okay, you can judge the rest for yourself.

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