Newsmakers [DVD]

The start of the film was disappointing, just shooting, no story line started anywhere. Now I know it is an action movie but a little bit of story line is needed to get things going. Luckily things improve when they end up in the appartment with the family with the kids. Here you see the various characters and their story develop. More shooting to follow but the ending is good, the escape and the ultimate end shows various human feelings of sticking through for friends, loyalty and doing your job right. The subtitles are a bit off at some stage, but unless you speak both languages you will not notice I guess.

I confess that when I started watching this film I thought, during the first half hour, that I was simply in for an above average action movie, with an incredibly high body count, as the bandits engage in shootouts in public places with a complete disregard for the consequences. The spetsnaz and OMON are used in force, but their contribution is purely to increase the aforementioned body count!

Yet when the bandits are forced to take refuge in the apartment of an ordinary family, where they are joined by another group of criminals, caught up in the sweep of the massive apartment block (and how many directors would have an actor of Sergey Garmash's stature not turn up till over half an hour into the film?)the film really finds its feet. There are moments of humour, and human warmth as well as menace, in the interactions between the family and their unwelcome guests. Here we learn who these desperate men really are. And the beauty is in the details: whilst others relax and soften, one huge thug obsessively scratches the table with a knife. When we finally see what he was doing, it turns out he was drawing the badge of the VDV - the elite paratroop regiment.

Embarrassed by hostile news coverage. the police go on the offensive, starting a 'media war', and turning the whole event into a 'reality show'. Whereas the bandits talk about 'fate' and 'destiny', seeing their futures as already fixed, the ambitious young Captain Katya Verbitskaya knows that even the past is not immutable: the 'live' footage is edited to show a falsely positive version of events.

One of the bandits shows a better understanding of modern realities, using the Internet to promulgate a true veraion of events, but even he eventually feels more kinship with the old world rather than the new, and the old-fashioned cop who defies orders to continue pursuing him.

So this apparent actioner turns out to be a satire against our media-driven society, without ever losing the verve and energy of its antecedents!

And there is a self-referential layer about the business of filming , too. e.g.
Overweight, older good-natured sidekick to our hero: "In the movies, people like me are killed first; yet look at me - alive and kicking...not even wounded once." (and he stays that way!)

So - a wide range of viewers should all enjoy this...

And KEEP watching - the final denouement takes place AFTER the credits!

For a Russian Movie, puts it in the same division as 'Bourne' and 'Bond'. Lots of action, seems that the budget was not a light one and the stunts were well planned and executed.