Brother 2

24 April 2023

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

See

Him: Danila (Sergei Bodrov) a Chechen war veteran turned unwitting gangster with a moral code returns to Moscow and reunites with some army buddies for a TV interview. One comrad recounts how his twin brother, a hockey player in Chicago is being shaken down by organised criminals. They hatch a scheme to go over to the US and resolve the complication by being better than the bad guys. 

Her: Brother 2 by Alexey Balabanov, 2000 release. 

A sequel of the original ‘Brother’ film about an ex soldier Danila Bagrov. This time he’s dealing in late 90s Moscow but murder of his friend by Russian/American mafia makes him go to Chicago to reconcile with the murderers and return the money stolen from his friends twin brother, a famous NHL player.

Think

Him: Danila seems innocent but opportunistic. A Russian folklore hero who doesn’t ask for trouble but when it finds him he fixes it. He’s cheeky and charming. Soft spoken but hard and unyielding. The scenes with his brother Viktor (Viktor Sukhorukov) are sweet and funny as the tables have turned from the first film and now the big bro is following the youngers lead. The fish out of water scenes of Russians in the US and how they handle a flawed system the does things differently. Like when Danila gets beaten up by a pimp’s thugs for trying to liberate Dasha, a Russian prostitute who fell on hard times in America. He tells the cops who arrest him he’s a tourist and medical student who came to visit a friend and was attacked. He didn’t know that you can’t walk anywhere. In Russia you can. He’s let off the hook just like he was after his friend in Moscow was murdered. The system is flawed and he’s just operating in it under its own bastardised rules. With different forms of racism and crime. Even down to taxi drivers complaining about politics and society. Viktor’s dream of how to make it in America following the money is corrupt, but not necessarily wrong 23 years later.

Her: I can’t think of this film outside of the context of what it has become for my generation. Danila himself became a heroic symbol of the 90s, where no rules technically existed, so everyone had to create their own code. And Danila’s code appealed to many. Question ‘in what lies power?’ became one of the most famous quotes, graffitied all around and asked by the most famous Russian  blogger Yuri Dud’ as a final question in all of his interviews.

Feel

Him: In his podcast Next Year in Moscow finale Arkady Ostrovsky referenced the last scene where Danila and Dasha are on a plane.

“Boy, bring us vodka. We’re going home” 

But also what made Danila an aspirational antihero. When confronting the mobster Mennis, atop his skyscraper across a chess board.

“My brother thinks power lies in money.

I think it resides in the truth.

You can lose but still have truth on your side. And you have the power.”

Alexei Navalny and his wife referenced Brother II on their return flight to Moscow from Berlin after he survived a Novochok assassination attempt. Knowing that like Danila his power resides in the truth and his aspirational vision of how things should be even if it means having to act in the circumstances of how they are now. Maybe he’ll become an example, like Bodrov. Died too soon. But behaved in a way that others look up to because few have the courage to emulate the heroic self sacrifice needed for change.

Her: I remember first hearing about this film from my brother Sergey. He had a VHS and was extremely excited to see it. It makes me feel nostalgic. It’s a good and honest action film, probably the best one ever made in Russia. But as a stand alone movie and outside of the nostalgic feelings it evokes I think I prefer the first part. 

This one feels more commercial, like any sequel does.