This is an absolute Russian national prize Nika winner with the best leading actor and best supporting actor. Also the music is superb (Eduard Nikolayevich Artemyev's, as in "Burnt by the Sun", "Barber of Siberia", "Mama", etc, etc; if anyone here hasn't heard of the great Russian composer - folks, you haven't heard Godlike music in your life!), the camera-work is delicious (Nikita Mikhalkov's constant partner Nikolay Lebeshev, who passed away in 1999, which is still a great loss for our national cinematography), and just check out the actors - Yevgeny Mironov (Nika Winner), Vladimir Mashkov (Nika Winner), Maxim Soukhanov, Kristina Orbakaite, Yrina Apeksimova (playing a bitch as always), SergeyGazarov... The plot is simple and it was in the air at the time. There is one talented guy Ivan who is unlocking other people's program, so he is a Russian hacker of the first wave. He is alone, besides his whores and accident drinking party buddies who are modern gangsters and businessmen in the first (they had never existed here before!) Moscow night clubs. And there is his friend working in a bank having a secret program. So their ways are to cross. So what will the Mashkov's character Ivan choose - to get $30,000 to open his friend's program with the bank accounts or to remain his only friend? And there is a funny girl whom Ivan (V.I.P.) met the other day when he f*cked her in a park bench one night which turned out to be his beloved woman later (a good sex scene for post-Soviet movies)! So we, watchers, laugh all the movie at Ivan and Petya watching their funny experiences and fights... And we cannot help but cry in the end.
Those were the middle 1990s with scores of organized killings, an era of crimson jackets and criminal showdowns. Who is Limita, you may ask. Limita were young people who came to Moscow to find success... Some found death... Watch this atmospheric movie with beautiful Mosccow sights, Fellini-like seemingly unreasonable activities and romance. The script's authors (great Pyotr Lutsyk and Alexey Samoryadov) are accidentally dead now as well as the producer Sergey Majarov killed by a gangster. We are alive...
