Rating: C
Dir: Aleksey Uchitel
Star: Aleksey Mantsygin, Vilma Kutaviciute, Aleksandr Novin, Artur Smolyaninov
a.k.a. Vosmerka
I guess Y2K as a computer issue was not a big thing in Russia. At least, that’s the case going by this film, which takes place in the waning days of 1999. Admittedly, they had other things on their mind – New Year’s Eve saw President Boris Yeltsin announce his resignation in the traditional broadcast to the nation. I feel this movie therefoe likely has more historical significance for local citizens than for me, who spent the same evening on the couch, on-call for a major bank, and waiting for planes to fall out of the sky. Not that the protagonist here, Gera (Mantsygin), really seems aware of the wider political situation, being far too busy cracking heads, both officially and for recreational purposes.
The former is in his role as a member of police special forces, who amusingly to Western eyes go about with something perilously close to HOMO on their jackets (top – it’s actually OMOH in Cyrillic, but good enough for a cheap guffaw). They are brought in whenever protests get out of control, and force is needed to restore order. When off-duty, he and his three close-knit pals cause trouble in local nightclubs, which bring them into conflict with shady businessman Buts (Novin) – spelled Boots in the subtitles, but I’m going with the end-credit spelling. This conflict escalates when Gera falls for Buts’s girlfriend, Aglaya (Kutaviciute), and they make plans to run off. Buts is not exactly on board with this idea, oddly enough.
As a glimpse into life on the streets of pre-millennial Russia, it’s decent. Not that there’s much sense of local flavour here: with perhaps a slight toning-down of the institutionalized police brutality, it could take place in Chicago, inner city London or Tokyo. Anywhere disaffected young people drift around, in search of meaning for largely empty lives. So: anywhere. The main problem for Gera is, in Buts he may have found an adversary not able to be cowed with a couple of whacks from a police baton, and capable of responding in kind. Although their adversary seems weary of the whole situation, and his reprisals are weak sauce i.e. getting one of Gera’s pals slightly stabbed with what looks like a pocket knife.
The problem for the audience, is mostly the lack of a novel angle from which to approach a well-worn narrative, of unfettered testosterone flailing around. Uchitel isn’t exactly Stanley Kubrick, and the romance at the core here is so obviously doomed, it might as well be carrying a copy of the Cliff Notes for Romeo and Juliet. By the end, it seems Gera may have been taught a valuable moral lesson about how violence doesn’t solve anything. Though whether or not he has learned anything from it, remains up for debate. If this had been set in London, I’d likely have scrolled past in on Tubi. Seems like a double shot of vodka makes everything just a little better.