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Brother
Brother
8.1
/10
4,442 Ratings

BROTHER

Брат

Directed by Aleksey Balabanov
Russia, 1997
Drama, Crime

Synopsis

Danila returns from his army service and is unemployed. On his mother’s advice, he leaves for St Petersburg where his older brother Viktor has been making good money. However, when he finds him, Viktor turns out to be a contract killer. Soon, Danila agrees to carry out an assignment for him.

Synopsis

Danila returns from his army service and is unemployed. On his mother’s advice, he leaves for St Petersburg where his older brother Viktor has been making good money. However, when he finds him, Viktor turns out to be a contract killer. Soon, Danila agrees to carry out an assignment for him.

Our take

The film that made enfant terrible Aleksey Balabanov’s name, Brother was a domestic smash hit. Almost single-handedly igniting the notion of a homegrown genre cinema, this morally ambiguous gangster movie with a killer soundtrack embodies the mercenary dog-eat-dog spirit of Russia’s “Wild Nineties.”