Welcome to the grand freak show of cosmic stupidity.
Every average movie goer knows that there are such thing as exploitation films. As you might remember, it's when film director intentionally uses one of the delicate themes for his films. Violence, war, gore, horror, sex, Blacks - everything seemed to be written and taped already. And some directors, as Andrei Smirnov and the majority of his contemporaries in Russia, loves to make films where they show Russia as a dirty archaic country and Russian people - as ugly mindless barbarians, always drunk and lustful. This is what I have to call rusxploitation.
Really, it's a film of fantastic absurd level, crazy to nonsense. There are no characters here to whom a viewer can feel somewhat of empathy. Just a bunch of stupid people run around in circles, shouting, shooting, fighting and raping each other. It's a well premise for trash comedy, but this film isn't positioned as such, though altogether with "Burnt by the Sun 2" and "My Joy" it should.
Goddamnit, I don't know how naive man should be to consider this garbage somewhat "historical" and "it's-all-true!" sort of film. The thing is, with some respect to the details in the surroundings and elements of everyday life, there are no middle tones here, just black and white, especially the first one. I'm glad I can't dive into sick imagination of the director, because this abyss is something really dangerous.
This is one shameful movie playing on the utter concentration of negative moments in the life of pre-soviet and soviet peasants. The main hook that this movie has is that it's filmed really good. Cinematography is colorful with decent attention to the details and the actors doing their job just fine. But the scenario is disgusting and untruthful to the maximum. The subject matter, film's concept, scenario and direction are beyond any critique. Dirty lampoon farce on Russia with stereotypical characters and all-around drinking and rolling in the hay (both literally and not). I guess it will be great if in the end some polar bears appeared and ate all these disgusting characters and film crew as well.
Man, I'm one of the most peaceful guys you could ever possibly met, but watching this made me wanna throw nuclear bomb on this crapworld of the movie. If author wanted to create a world to hate, he prevailed, for sure. For any other reason imaginable - this is one big fail. Step over this useless phobic flick and move on. Oh yeah, and screw this awful pseudo-accent (even the descendants of the people that lived there say that their ancestors didn't talk like this).
Ignore this awful farce, it's worthless, although spectacular. But if you are into stereotypes about Russia as a country of drunks, thieves and sluts, go ahead, it won't disappoint you. But not for the thinking people anyhow.
