New actors get a chance to shine in this formulaic survival thriller.
The usual cinemas that I had expected to screen this sensational new Russian release did not do so so I ended up heading over to the Kosmos Kinoteatr on Prospekt Mira just two days after its premier. Even here though the showing had been relegated to a small upstairs venue – the sort that boasts bean bags for seats. An Art House flick sort of venue.
This was no Art House movie however, as the ten so or so punters and me who had turned up that night were about to discover…
Bolevoi Porog constitutes the latest addition to the crime/adventure thriller subgenre of which the impressive Otryv (reviewed earlier) also belongs.
Andrei Simonov has made his debut with this 100 minute long 16+ drama – by Look film in association with R. Media and distributed by SB Film -as both the scribbler of the script and the man holding the megaphone.
The acting talent that he has called on,whilst not quite household names, offer a synergy of old hands and rising stars. For instance, Arina Postkinova (Full Transformation, 2013) has already quite a prolific screen presence despite being just past her mid-twenties, whereas the 50-year-old Villen Babichek, a character actor who plays a villain, will be known to many for his role in Viking (2016).
Trial by fire.
`Everyone has their own pain threshold`runs the tagline for this movie (albeit which does not appear on the promotional poster). The story concerns the fate of three young Russians who are learn this fact.
The central players are two couples, rich daddy and mummies’ boys and girls one and all, including Lena (Postkinova), Tanya (Natalia Skomorokhova), Kirill (Roman Kurstyn) and Sergey (Kirill Komarov). They are just the sort of vacant and narcissistic tearaways destined, in such cautionary tales, to open the jack-in-a-box of fate….
We discover them enjoying an insouciant car chase with the politsia before their vehicle swerves and slams into a nightclub. The unimpressed manager, perhaps sensing them to be untouchable, advises them to clear well out of the city.
Next we find them, as carefree as ever, driving a van through the remote splendour of Gorny Altai (bordering Kazakhstan). They are ready for a spot of camping and Hiking. And white water rafting.
As their designated guide (Eugene Mundum) turns out to be a creepy old drunk, they make their own way to the water’s edge, waiving aside warnings about the hazards that lie ahead.
In one of the most effective and enlivening sequences in the film, they find the rapids to be more ferocious than they had counted on and they become separated and lose their dinghy.
This group of men present themselves as matey fellow travellers but in fact that they are escaped convicts. And they seem in no mood to be trifled with. Along with Babichek they include Evgeny Atarik (Dark World, 2010), Grigory Chaban (Vasha Neba, 2019), Oleg Fomin and Alexander Golubkov.
When one of the youths knocks out one of this party, in a bid to escape their effective enslavement, a chase between gilded youth and desperadoes ensues which becomes a no holds barred fight for survival.
Here is a film to make you grateful for the regimentation and anonymity of city life.
Lost resonances.
This is a sure-footed first film and one which showcases some emerging talent but it tells an oft told tale. It is the one about innocents discovering their inner strengths and inner demons in extremis. This, and the overall premise, makes Bolevoi Porog similar to the breakthrough movie Deliverance (1972) which has spawned many such imitators.
There exists one poignant scene where two of the youths, fleeing for their lives, descend a mountainside on which a village of Mongolic people are settled. The immediate response of the former is one of distrust and fear at the very appearance of these obvious metropolitans.
This uneasiness between the moneyed Russians and other ethnicities could have made for an interesting subtheme but is not really explored much further.
I find it difficult, in fact, to mine many wider themes from this film. Otryv seemed to suggest that Russia’s youth are being stymied by uncaring and incompetent elders. That would apply here too – except for the fact that, in this, the Young are architects of their own fates and there is a karmic sense to that which unfolds.
Sense of wilderness.
There have been recent television drama serials which have trodden similar waters. For instance Flint, broadcast by N.T.V – in effect a Russian reworking of Rambo: First Blood – also depicted a man reduced to an almost primitive state in fighting against greater odds.
The setting saves this film from banality, however. The cinematographer Andrei Losivof brings out the sun drenched Arcadia which provides the backdrop well and this is then enhanced by the incidental music of Dmitry Elemyanov – who this year also provided the score for Poteryanni Ostrov (Lost Island), which also features a stark landscape. The epic magnitude of his music shifts the film into horror territory.
The cast exhibit such vigorous performances that there is no need to show much gore, even when awful acts are committed. Then, for such a predictable scenario, the ending surprised me a little – and there was even some much-needed light relief in the final reel. Nevertheless, Otryv, with its fiendish and fresh premise remains the more memorable movie from this genre.
Trailer for BOLEVOI POROG (Russian language).
Featured image: courtesy- timeout.ru.