Tycoon (2002)

The acting was good to excellent, and the overall plot themes were clear. This group of friends leaps into post-Soviet Russia and makes a fortune by bending the rules such that there are rules, and playing the political side of the economic game. In the course of doing this, they run afoul of a government that is equally corrupt. This is a setting that a well made film might turn into a masterpiece.Unfortunately it doesn't happen. There are so many throwbacks and forward scenes that one would need to watch the movie with pen and paper in hand, tracing the characters and their actions to try and keep track of the specifics. The movie tries to help out by actually labeling each scene with a timeline, before and after the death of Plato, the central character. But even with these guideposts, the back and forth movement of time requires extraordinary effort to translate into meaningful flows and never develops a satisfying momentum. It is akin to reading a history in which a few paragraphs of Alexander are followed by a series on Hiroshima and then by a brief exposition on the founding of Rome, followed by a vignette on the Crusades.No doubt some will see this approach as a puzzle challenge. Personally I thought it interfered with both the entertainment value of Tycoon, and the capacity of the movie to sustain intensity of interest. The end result is a crippled performance in which one is tempted to throw up their hands and say, "Ah, they are all just crooks, let's see some action". If that was the intent, the movie does provide some gratification, but it could have been so much more.

Oligarkh, is an average movie about a group of friends taking advantage of the opportunities "new Russia" offered after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The movie has certain value in giving a rough sketch of how the vacuum left by the collapsed communist system was filled by various criminal elements. However, it fails to do that comprehensively, possibly because, as it targets the Russian audience, it assumes too much information. The transformation of the 'naive, jolly group of friends" into a vicious, ruthless, hierarchical criminal organization is not well demonstrated, phases of changes in characters' world views and emotions largely left to the imagination of the audience. Since the story is told going back and forth in time, some of the criticism can be overlooked, but one cannot help but notice some plot holes. Moreover, it ends in a quite cheesy way, reminding a cheap Hollywood B-movie, something I do not hope to see in a supposedly-sophisticated Russian movie.The acting is generally good, but not outstanding. I thought supporting characters were more impressive than the hero, and I especially liked the commissar and his style. Direction is not bad, and actually it made me think that it was directed by a talented, but inexperienced director. It seems Lungin has a longer career than I expected.

I'm absolutely surprised that people in the West and especially in US watch this movie. Equally, I'm surprised they read War and Peace, Idiot, Crime and Punishment, Fathers and Sons etc.This is not to say the movie is of the same magnitude as the books in the list, rather that it's equally deep and ought to be equally strange for a westerner. And, as usual, the moral of the story is ( kind of ) based on a piece of ( Galich, "One more time about the devil" ) poetry, and poetry is never easy to translate. From my point of view, the story is entertaining and educating - to me. It's a little scary - to me, meaning "thank god I was too young to be a part of it", but it certainly is not "herky-jerky", characters are definitely well-developed. I was actually quite surprised how convincing the acting and the dialogs were.Someone said the movie "asks more questions than it answers", I'd say it's what a good movie should do! Art is actually about asking questions, not answering them. If you want answers, turn to religion.I rate the movie 10 out of 10 ( though it would be about 96 out of 100, some minor technicalities ).

This is a very good and realistic movie showing the birth of Russian capitalism, the people who were behind it, the Russian mafia in its true form, and the man who made a fortune in a dawn of Russian capitalism. The movie is based on the novel "Bolshaya Paika" (The Big Slice) by Yuly Dubov about Boris Berezovsky, the true oligarch of Russia. This is the man whom Vladimir Mashkov brilliantly portrays in the charachter of Platon. 9/10