After meeting his old buddies from the Chechen war on a TV show, babyfaced Danila soon starts helping Kostya, whose twin brother is a professional hockey player being held to ransom by Chicago mobsters. When Kostya ends up dead, Danila and his brother make a trans-Atlantic journey for vengeance.

Capturing the head-on collision of Russian and American values at the start of a new century, this superlative sequel wryly tackles questions of personal agency and bravado. Interrogating stereotype with Aleksey Balabanov’s savage wit, Brother 2 subversively needles the notion of national identity.