Arrow past heart About the existence of the film “Vladivostok” I learned by chance. A good friend, very flattering about him, encouraged me and my wife to watch. I will not hide it, I started with a lot of skepticism. I apologize for the gastronomic comparisons, but it was expected that once again something criminal and household from provincial life with a touch of melodrama, seasoned with black. And to some extent, so it turned out, only the dish, surprisingly, turned out to be quite edible. It's not the ingredients, as it turns out, but the cook. History, despite some simplicity and predictability, still carried away, led. I wanted to keep watching and see how things turned out.
From the very first shots it became clear that the film was made very well. Actors’ play, camera work, dialogue, plot development, soundtrack – everything turned out to be as tightly knocked down, as well as the male friendship that the two main male characters demonstrate to us. And somehow he believes in this friendship, and even envy takes – that’s after all, there are such guys.
In a sense, “Vladivostok” inherits the Balabanovsk “brothers”. As if the shadow of Danila Bagrov invisibly hovers over the main character. Laconic, moderately brutal, not at all a “skirter”, but a knight. How can you not love that? From the hero of Bodrov Jr., our character is distinguished, perhaps, by the aura of doom that accompanies the hero throughout the film. It turned out a kind of Byronic character tailored by the standards of the XXI century.
I don’t really want to call what happened to him a “great love.” In this case, the annotation for the film operates with templates. In my understanding, life began to betray this guy early, and therefore he is not much inclined to trust and borrow, doing it rather out of hopelessness.
From the first shot we see a lonely and homeless fugitive. He's cold and scared. He seeks warmth in the hope that someone can finally be trusted. That someone, like himself, suffers from cold and loneliness under a starless and indifferent sky. (No wonder one of the main leitmotifs of the film is the cold of the surrounding world.)
And he decides to trust... Where it leads, decide for yourself. Even my wife and I disagreed about what we saw. And this can be attributed to the absolute pluses of the picture. This is not the case in this film at all.
Now, a word about the minuses. Despite the well-twisted story, the film lacks depth, piercing. The arrow flies near and yet past the heart. You look at human drama, and you react with your head more like, ‘Yeah, that’s their romance.’ That's where he likes her starting... Here he protects her... That's their intimacy. And this is despite the fact that by nature I myself am not a dry mouldy. Just the day before yesterday, I sniffed my nose at Grishkovets. Something did not allow me to fully connect, identify with the hero of “Vladivostok”. I don’t think that happened to the filmmakers themselves. Looks like we were told a story that didn't really catch the narrator. Well, it's a story, though.