Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Terror strikes the underground train system in Moscow in the form of a flood from a collapsed tunnel. The film follows a diverse group of Moscow citizens who find themselves trapped in the city’s underground rail network, their train derailed and virtually crushed after an aging tunnel collapses. Amongst this band of survivors is softly spoken surgeon Andrey (Sergei Puskepalis), whose wife is having an affair with the conceited businessman Vlad (Anatoly Beliy). Fate brings these two men together on the same doomed train, but there is little time to resolve their differences, as the tunnel begins to quickly fill with water, forcing them to work together with the others and find a way back to the surface.
Metro (2013) is a competent Russian disaster thriller that follows familiar genre conventions — a diverse group of survivors trapped in an escalating catastrophe, forced to cooperate despite personal conflicts. The love-triangle subplot layered onto the disaster framework is a well-worn device that adds little freshness. Acting is solid, particularly Puskepalis, grounding the melodrama with believable restraint. The cinematography handles the claustrophobic, flooded tunnel sequences capably, with effective tension in the practical setpieces. The ending resolves in a fairly conventional fashion for the genre. Overall it's an above-average entry in Russian disaster cinema but offers little that distinguishes it from Hollywood or international counterparts.