Break (2019)
Rated NR 1 hour 25 minutes

Break, directed by Tigran Sahakyan, revolves around five friends who want to go on a cable car in the snowy mountains to celebrate the New Year. One of the friends, Kirill, refuses to go in the car because he has left his bag. He planned to propose to his girlfriend, Katya, and the ring was inside the bag. However, the bag was in the cable car all along. It was implied with Roma’s sarcastic tone that he might’ve hidden it all along, hinting at his antagonistic nature in the film. Roma was interested in Katya and flirted with her on the cable car. The other two friends were a couple, Denis and Vika.

Then, the four friends in the cable car got stuck because the person controlling the cars got suffocated as the machine malfunctioned. Since this movie is a survival thriller, the four friends devise ways to escape the cable cars and seek help since they have no signal. Their first attempt was to use the emergency kit in the cable car to escape, but the rope was not long enough to reach the ground. During this, Denis died, and Vika got heavily injured. Vika succumbed to the cold not long after. It was at this moment that Roma started to show his selfish nature as he attempted to kill Katya when they got stuck on top of the cable car. Katya made it back in the cable car, and Roma fell off.

Kirill, Katya’s boyfriend, did little to no work during the film, except at the end. He immediately assumed that Katya was sleeping over with someone else. This part was frustrating as he was more concerned about her sleeping with someone else when he planned to marry her. However, he realized that something was wrong near the end, and he rushed back to the cable car control room and Katya was rescued.

It was a decent thriller movie with good suspense, but the characters were badly written and died off too quickly. Katya’s survival skills were well executed. However, I do not see the point of an antagonist in this film, and it felt like Roma was just there to hinder Katya, but he couldn’t even last 10 minutes. Her other friends played no role in the survival. Despite Denis being optimistic and figuring out some plan early on, his death being first because of Roma ruined his character. Vika dying early on also had no impact on the plot. The side characters were so useless that it could’ve just been Roma, Kirill, and Katya, and the movie would be the same. Kirill’s lack of action and his screentime were also not needed, as they did nothing but build onto the suspense of “when is he going to realize his wife is going to die?” Break (2019) is a solid thriller movie but could use more character depth.