Dead Man’s Bluff

Those who know Alexei Balabanov as a director of the black & white art films Happy Days and The Castle will now have to make a definite adjustment to their view. Since Brother, Balabanov has taken the path of the commercially successful film and has become one of the most popular film makers in Russia today. The idiosyncratic Dead Man’s Bluff cannot be compared with Balabanov’s previous work. It is a gangster film, like Brother, but with harsh humour, sarcasm and a total lack of morality. The story itself is not particularly important; as often in films like this, it all revolves around a suitcase full of drugs. More important is that the film is an exaggerated picture of the situation in Russia in the 1990s, when the Russian Mafia blossomed and created its own ‘culture’ with coarse language (including xenophobia, as in all former Communist countries), specific clothing and hairstyles, fat gold chains and merciless cruelty. Since the film’s successful release in Russia, Balabanov has been described as the Russian Tarantino, but the great difference is – as Nikita Mikhalkov has remarked – that Tarantino filmed his own fairytales, while Balabanov portrays harsh reality. With Nikita Mikhalkov in his first role as antihero, and with many other prominent Russian actors, including former Tiger Award candidate Renata Litvinova, the film moves away from the cliché of the nostalgic Russian film. New genres have definitively found their place with Russian audiences. (LC)

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