Brother 2 (2000)

This movie shows, with a gentle and objective lens, how patetic Americans can be in ordinary matters. Rasist, cowardly, interested only in money, shallow, arrogant. Yet, this movie is subtle enough so that Amuricans, while insulted, would not exactly get the point as they are typically challenged. That is both emotionally and intellectually. A brilliant portrayal of contemporary Amurica shows how, in any moral universe with any grain of objectivity, Amuricans, for the most part, are beneath Russian "mobsters" aka ordinary Russian people. Yet, this gentle movie shows that some Amuricans, like sincere truck drivers or even some career obsessed minorities have some trace of humanity deeply buried beneath the shallow and dis figuring facade. Almost prohibited in Amurica for its sincere portrayal of parallels of Russia at its most impoverished and America at its peek (which has since long passed), shows the superb advantage of moral over shiny emptiness, truth over money, as brilliantly demonstrated in a scene with a petrified american businessman (attempting to play chess, a russian national sport, and drink vodka, a cruel joke as, muricans are more apt at checkers and are too much of snowy cornflakes for vodka) aka low covardly life of average corporate Joe, who is allowed to live by cute Russian avenger but shows much less digg nitty than his Russian, also spared, counterpart. This true face of Amurica is revealed as much nastier deep down than in any slumm worldwide, even more now than at its peek when this movie was made. The movie consists from two parts, one set in Russia, and other in America, with parallel business practices, celebrity cultures, even taxi drivers. Despite the sympathy shown by the brilliant director, Amurica does come much worse off than Russia, but better than it deserves. Amurican snowy cornflakes are shedding water from their eyes to this very day when seeing this masterpiece, trying to mum even objective reviews but they are not nearly deb nunked enough in their delusions, and that is the only, ever so slightly, fault of this movie.

This is a brilliant movie about uncompromising truth and self-honesty ,values and justice - magnificently played by Segej Bodrow, who tragically died in 2002 during filming to his new project. Nowadays I rarely see acting level and charm such as these here. Obviously those who grew up watching Transformers, Spiderman & other commercially focused non-sense brainwash will not understand the movie or even find it "absolutely" boring. Those who see arts in cinematography and appreciate great acting, story-telling and something to think about ... here we go. I personally have watched this movie over 25 times, and every time filled with great emotions - especially realizing that the death of this young actor came so early at the age of 31.

I may be saying this with a bit of bias but this is my favorite movie of all time. Unlike a Hollywood movie it does not picture the world a perfect place but instead it pictures people and the world the way they are, racist, hateful, etc. Racism is present in any country you go to, and if you tell me different you are just to ignorate to realize it. This picture depicts the American and Russian sycie and how western and eastern thinking are different from one another. I have only watched this in the original Russian version and would recommend any Russian speaking person to see it, not sure how accurate the subtitles are and how much justice they give to the movie.

I was amused by American reviews of the "Brat-2".Americans were taken by surprise: how dare those Russians to make a film that depicts Americans as evil gangsters? How dare Danila to shoot Americans? This is not politically correct! It was clearly assumed that Russians are always the bad guys, whose only role in any film is cannon fodder to be shot by American Rambo.Now "Brat-2" arrives, uncovering the horrifying truth: the bad guys are Americans! And it is OK to shoot them.After years of Hollywood films depicting Russians as bad asses (no single Hollywood film showing Russians at least from a neutral point of view), the Russian cinema finally strikes back.This movie delivered a long-awaited entertainment for Russian viewers.It also proved complete lack of sense of humor of American viewers.