Four dogs… and four machines, pounding on the pavement, appear at the beginning of the film. One of the dogs is hit by a car. Such juxtapositions of nature and technology suggest the clash between interests of modernity and sentient beings in contemporary Russia. Three customers and a bar man appear next…the stories that the customers tell each other are outright lies or distorted…and abuse of alcohol is a dominant theme throughout the film. People drink to stay warm and keep going, rolling with the punches life deals them. By the end of the film, one of the three customers is imprisoned for murder while another is killed in a car crash. The third, a young woman, buries a sister who chokes to death on bread chew used for making doll masks—-the sales of dolls support their large extended family. The senseless waste of human resources is the main theme that unifies this film which ends with a scene of soldiers boarding four war planes headed towards war zones.