|
|
|
|
|
Brother (Brat)
|
Director:
|
|
Alexie Balabanov |
|
Starring:
|
|
Sergei Bodrov Jr. |
|
Country:
|
|
|
|
Genre:
|
|
|
|
Type:
|
|
Color
|
|
Year:
|
|
1997
|
|
Language:
|
|
Russian w/English subt.
|
|
Length:
|
|
96 mins.
|
|
Available Media:
|
|
35mm, DVD, VHS, Other
|
|
|
|
|
| Description |
Russia's biggest box office hit in 1997, Alexei Balabanov's Brother is an American-style gangster flick mixed with a pointed social consciousness. World cinema has only just begun to show us views of raw, impoverished post-Soviet Russia: Brother does it with stark gunplay and one captivating lead performance.
Danila (Sergei Bodrov) returns from army service to a St. Petersburg transformed into a casual culture high on music and consumerism. The chaotic atmosphere, carefully depicted by Balabanov's moody camerawork, easily invites the smug, belligerent Danila into a world of crime. Soon the youth is accompanying his brother Viktor, a contract killer for the Russian underworld, on violent escapades where wads of cash and a well-gripped gun are the ultimate symbols of power. Bodrov's cynical, brutal performance, reminiscent of tough-guy roles from countless Hollywood mob movies, further conveys the sense that the 1990s St. Petersburg is not a far cry from the blood-strewn Chicago of the late 1920s. And like Bogart and Cagney, Bodrov makes his morally challenged hero strangely likeable.
By combining classic motifs of lawlessness with revelatory scenes of a newly-borne Eastern Europe, Brother becomes at once a sardonic movie thriller and a fiercely patriotic political statement. |
| Awards |
|
OFFICIAL SELECTION CANNES FILM FESTIVAL |
| Critical Acclaim |
|
"A Terrifically Stylish Gangster Film."- Stephen Holden, New York Times
"The best Russian movie I've seen in years" - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
"There's more freshness and electricity in any five minutes of Brother than in all the Lethal Weapon films put together" - Jay Carr, THE BOSTON GLOBE
****1/2 - Dave Kehr, THE DAILY NEWS
|
 back to top |
|
|
