The fireman: Review

A quirky, blood stained satire of Russian gangland shenanigans.

Alexei Balabanov

Yuri Matveev, Mikhail Skryabin, Alexander Mosin

ROTTERDAM - punchy dialogue must not only with a crazy intrusive score, but also significant audience laughter in the Stoker, a breezy, pitch-black comedy compete Russia's King of cinematic controversy, Alexei Balabanov. With his blunt nudity, sex, violence and death, this is only for adult material of choice, which should receive as much International Festival exposure as the author/Director similar to mordant cargo 200 and Morphia.

Shot on the video with the unpolished feel of a project for the after hours of Russian TV, there was a cult success on DVD and on the small screen in more ' permissive' easy to find markets.

The fireman is Mikhail Skryabinabout a minimal Central performance from rugged veteran, to share its name with its character. The fictional Skryabin is "a great one Yakut and a hero of the Soviet Union." (The Yakuts are a historically oppressed ethnic group of mid-Siberia.)

After for his services in the 1980s war in Afghanistan, Skryabin is years now set up in the main Concierge, tends the huge underground boilers of a building in an unnamed city (most likely St. Petersburg). Concussion stunned, Skryabin divides his time between tap letter with a short story writing of the land of his ancestors, and the more difficult burning stoves to keep.

Visitors its oppressive work-cum-residence include glamorous daughter Sasha (Aida Tumutova), the co-owner a Yakut topics fur business and representatives of the underworld, the furnaces for burning uncomfortable bodies. Boundaries between police officers and criminal in fact are fluid in the middle of the 90 years Russia. The local kingpin is Skryabin's former comrades-in-arms, "Sergeant" (Alexander Mosin), is the silent henchmen "Bison" (Matveyev) not only with Sasha, but also with their business partners Masha (Korotaeva), Sergeant's scheming, ambitious daughter at rest.

Balabanov structures be material with the aplomb of a gifted Farceur, choreographed several come and go over the atmospheric grim city-many foot-character that fate is static and lethally interwoven with each other.

In the early stretches some issues, why on Earth the cheeky score is so very noisy. Balabanov is a small handful of Latin-themed pop tracks in the entire, catchy including infernally cuts of popular fusion guitarist Didula.

But a large part of the fun this repetitive, jaunty inconsistency is very fast. The tinny music us through, which, despite Skryabin's war traumatized slowness, a refreshing fast-paced, broad-brush approach allegorical satire of the 90's Russia as one in the vicinity of lawless dystopia of greedy immorality.

Just desserts to do, but in a climax blending startlingly unexpected bloodshed with real sharpness, rounded with a white cake CODA visualization Skryabin's literary Dabblings get. Performances are even on the money in an image that has little truck with the gauge.

Venue: Rotterdam Film Festival
Production company: CTB production
Cast: Mikhail Skryabin, Yuri Matveev, Alexander Mosin, Aida Tumutova, Anna Korotaeva
Director, writer: Alexei Balabanov
Manufacturer: Sergey Selyanov
Director of photography: Alexander Simonov
Production designer: Anastasiya Karimulina
Publisher: Tatjana Kuzmicheva
Sales: Intercinema, Moscow
No review, 84 minutes