Criminal Fiction in St. Petersburg Destiny is monstrous and empty.
The wheel has been launched since birth.
afflictions and diseases,
well-being in vain
And it doesn't lead to anything.
Destiny follows on the heels
secretly and unrelentingly
Every one of them is like a plague.
(Excerpt from Karl Orff's Burana Fireplace)
Today, the “dashing 90s” are perceived as a troubled time, and are remembered by many with shudder. But this is from today, when those years seem crazy and crazy. At the same time, someone did not think much about the hard time and the confusion that is happening around. Then people just lived, survived, and to analyze these years began much later, in a well-fed and relatively quiet time. And the past time in the life of the country was really tough, confused and crazy. Cinema was the same then, for “the most important of the arts” has always been a kind of mirror standing in the courtyard of the era. However, many films that appeared then today have irrevocably sunk into oblivion, and only a few know about their existence. As a rule, these are people of that era, in which those films left a trace in memory that has not faded over the years. There are cult tapes of the 90s (for example: “You’re Me Alone...”, “Everything will be OK!”, “Shirley Myrli”, “Peculiarities of the National Hunt”, “Voroshilov Shooter”, “Brother”), there are classic (such as “Burnt by the Sun”, “Love in Russian”, “Caucasian Prisoner”, “Yermak”), and there are now forgotten, but at that time quite popular paintings. The latter include this film, shot by Ilya Makarov on the witty script of Konstantin Murzenko, and released in 1998.
It's not fear. This is the natural anxiety of a warrior.
The film captures its easy, but at the same time twisted plot, which is told in a relaxed, satirical language. The atmosphere of the ribbon envelops and plunges into the ever-rainy, covered by drenched winds Peter of the 90s. The plot revolves around the body of an influential businessman kidnapped by two bandits - lovers. The corpse is needed by the deceased’s wife, his gangster friends, and his foreign business partners who specially came to his funeral service. But before his death from a drug overdose, he threw his wife and old lover for a lot of money. Now the last one - one of the kidnappers of the mortal body, wants to pay back the debt. He intends to “scave” the grandmother from the widow of the deceased and his business partners. In parallel with this, the plot tells the stories of occasionally intersecting heroes: a fashionable St. Petersburg DJ, two “brothers” and one ownerless actress of Asian appearance. Who unwittingly stole the sea uniform of his brother, a midshipman, preparing to sing at some important military concert. Towards the end, all these characters, in the spirit of Tarantino’s paintings, will meet to solve their problems once and for all.
- Cold? That's right, it's the wind of death. We go to her, and next to death there is always a draft.
If you think that this film is another attempt by our filmmakers to play Tarantino, then you are basically right. The script of the film was clearly inspired by the Golden Palm Branch hit of the American movie-bastard. With an eye on him, Murzenko wrote his previous script - the text of the unscrupulous criminal comedy "Mom does not grieve!" (1997) - which at one time had a great public resonance. Only here the contrast of shifted genres is more noticeable, and only a person with a “black” sense of humor can call this film a comedy. Who is the author of this review... There are no murders, almost no shootings and fights, and there is only one car chase. In short, this is not a gangster fighter for sure. The drama, however, can not be attributed to the idiocy of the plot lying in the heart. And although the gloomy hero of the very young Alexander Lazarev, Jr., sometimes gives out some philosophical aphorisms (something, you can safely write down in a personal citation book, especially his dictum about death), and the heroes are sometimes in serious danger - jokes and funny situations in which the characters are inclined to the film to the comedy genre. But there is nothing wrong in this, the benefit in the plot is abounding paraphernalia of the 90s (“powder” that the hero sniffs from the compact – a disk through a rolled hundred dollars, “brothers” dressed in black leather, a kind of slang of characters, etc.), which, together with the musical accompaniment, coupled with the cantata of Karl Orff “Oh Fortune” from “Kamina Burana”, create the necessary atmosphere of “hard time”. Plus driving a steep foreign car with lowered glass in the autumn, rainy city. The film is remembered by everyone who has ever seen it. The plot is unusual and does not fit into any particular genre. The film is a little bit of everything: humor, a slice of the era, a certain caricature of modern society, drama and poignancy. It just so happened that in the year of release the picture did not attract a large number of viewers, and therefore did not have a loud public resonance. Although on the then TV movie Makarov played quite often ...
You're gonna be sun-faced, boy! Sun-faced as a lion! Yeah, the lion of you, of course. Be a tiger! I'll make you a tiger tonight. You shall be the tiger of my wrath!
In other roles, in addition to the Man in the Black Hat and the cloak played, as Lazarev Jr. has already said, some guests of the “gangster” cinema of that time lit up in the film. Among them, for example, young Mikhail Porechenkov, today difficult-presented in the role of “brother”. But the characters are played, mostly unknown actors are great and everyone is remembered. Whether it is a major pop DJ performed by Andrey Barilo, a stray artist from the repertory theater performed by Evgenia Igumnova, an eccentric maid in the hotel - played by the now popular clown Elena Sparrow, a gangster played by Lilia Azarkina, and a couple of bandits stuck in a not frail "mix" because of the urgently needed "roofed" by them DJ naval uniform (one of which was played by a young Porechenkov). Some of the unusual situations in which heroes fall. Like, for example, the pursuit of a good company of sailors for two unlucky brothers who decided to undress their comrade. A scene in a tattoo parlor, when the possibility of “turning” a bull terrier into a tiger is seriously discussed. Or a scene in which the drunken and snorted hero Lazarev tries to take possession of the very artist dressed in a sailor’s uniform, then retreating with annoyance as soon as he realized that this “sailor” is a girl. As well as the final scene of the gangster showdown, shot in my opinion too stylized, when dozens of “brothers” have frozen like mannequins pointing weapons at each other, and the operator from different angles, slowly takes the camera up somewhere, showing this kind of “stop frame”... If you watch the film on a "fresh" head, nothing in advance from him without expecting, then you will be pleasantly surprised. For this, which has, to put it mildly, a strange name, and an even stranger plot, the film is a worthy example of the “mad” “dashing” of the 90s, not restrained by criticism of cinema.
9 out of 10