Trigger-happy sibling assassins Simon and Sergei work as errand boys for Mikhailovich, the sadistic kingpin of a provincial Russian town. But after the brothers bungle a crucial drug deal, and a crooked cop’s death squad grabs their briefcase of heroin, Mikhailovich’s patience wears thin.
Playing like a comically heightened subversion of his two Brother films, this hypermodern neo-noir finds Aleksey Balabanov taking the Russian gangster film to new heights of self-awareness. Riotously funny, and morally ambivalent, Dead Man’s Bluff filters the zeitgeist through the prism of genre.