Brief Story Line
Story was set in St Petersburg and focused on a police detective named Major Igor Grom (Tikhon Zhiznevsky) who always catch criminals by disregarding procedures. This made his boss Colonel Prokopenko (Aleksei Maklakov) mad for his behaviors. Later, when a rich billionaire's son was set free from obvious crime he committed, successful Tech mogul named Sergei Razumovsky (Sergei Goroshko) and his best friend Oleg (Dmitry Chebotaryov) were among those most critical of such decision.
After a mysterious man wearing mask and flamethrowers appeared on the social media under the name of Plague Doctor and started killing people who seemed to be above the law, a lot of people were pro against such action. Igor who has strong sense of justice wanted to investigate the case but was not allowed due to his past actions. However, together with detective trainee Dima (Aleksandr Seteykin) they secretly still look into this. Their work though were being hindered by the appearance of famous blogger/journalist Yulia Pchelkina (Lyubov Aksyonova) and FSB agent assigned to the case Evgeniy Strelkov (Mikhail Evlanov).
So how would the story conclude? You could find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I have seen few Russian movies in recent years which were released in theaters and a post on one of those films was actually quite popular. So when I saw this movie's trailer which seemed interesting with its action sequence, I did not hesitate to give it a try despite not understanding its language. Anyway, the film's premise was not too difficult to comprehend. It's a story of intelligent detective with good fighting skills and able to solve many huge cases, but facing his toughest challenge yet.
Now I read about this movie on the internet later and found out that it was based on popular comic books of the same title, written by Artem Gabrelyanov & Evgeniy Fedotov and published through Bubble Comics from Russia (similar to Marvel or DC in US). When I watched the film, I did have a comic book feel, especially looking at the villain. It actually reminded me about Batman (which funnily enough was briefly mentioned in the movie). Since I have not read the comics, I kept on waiting (and a bit hoping) that Igor would have super power after a while, making this a superhero origin movie. For those who have read them, would know the outcome but those who are like me, I better let you find out yourselves.
The early part of the movie was pretty fun, when Igor was shown chasing after bank robbers. And personally I really loved the opening credit which looked stylish and artistic to my opinion, with a great musical score accompanying it. Throughout the movie, Igor's behavior was fun to see and his investigation was quite intriguing, making me having quite high anticipation towards the conclusion. I was actually quite fond of his character and Tikhon Zhiznevsky seemed perfect for this role. I also liked the detective trainee Dima and the blogger Lyubov Aksyonova who has nice chemistry with Igor. There was one big moment that I really enjoyed when Igor managed to find the truth, as it was really surprising and amazing.
The action sequence were pretty decent with Tikhon showing off some good fight moves. And the special effects were generally OK. The ending was not something that I expected since it felt a bit dark and having a strong social political message. Duration of the movie was pretty long, 137 minutes which was sufficient as a first movie of possibly a series of films. There was one mid end credit scene and a surprising post end credit scene, which I think was to set up for future sequels. From what I understand, the movie was highly regarded in Russia and perhaps a sequel would be just a matter of time. After all, there are several story arcs in the comic series that they can explore.
Overall this was a pretty interesting Russian movie. It has some light moments involving our hero and some heavier dark story related to the super villain Plague Doctor. If you like seeing this sort of movie and you are OK to give a chance watching non English language films, then this could be an interesting option. I myself did enjoy this one, even if it was not as spectacular as Hollywood action movies.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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