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DVD Chuzhaya
 Run time: 100 min Rating: 6.5 Genres: Action | Drama Director: Anton Bormatov Writers: Vladimir Nesterenko, Sergei Sokolyuk Stars: Natalya Romanycheva, Evgeniy Tkachuk, Kirill Polukhin |
| Storyline A Russian mob boss sends a group of henchmen to capture a woman hiding out in the Czech Republic. The plan backfires when she turns out to be a ruthless killer and pits her captors against each other. |
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| Plot Keywords: kiev, mafia, brother sister relationship, orphan, revenge | |
| Details: Country: Russia, USA Release Date: 17 June 2010 (Russia) |
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4 comments
"Alien Girl" is a sober look at the Russian criminal world of the 1990's. There are no colourful exaggerations, no attempts at glorifying criminals, no good guys and no happy endings. This is not Hollywood, this is real life.
Set in Kiev, Ukraine, a brigade of four gangsters is sent on a mission to Prague to retrieve a Russian girl who is to be used to keep her arrested brother's mouth shut.
The acting is superb all across the board, but special mentions go to Evgeni Tkachuk for playing Quick going through the mental stages of his misadventure and Aleksandr Golubkov for his role as Baby, the calm and collected leader of the quartet.
Konstantin Ernst himself got behind the camera for some scenes and helped direct, and he is to be commended on a job well done.
This film shows real criminal life, raw and gritty as it is.
10/10
This is a straightforward gangster movie set in Eastern Europe. A few soldiers of a crime boss are sent to retrieve a girl in another country. Suffice to say not everything works out exactly as planned. This movie has strong interpersonal relationships that the action revolves around, leading to a fairly well executed conclusion. Nothing too outlandish appears in this film, but it is a very solid watch. Great directing, and good acting from all the actors involved. The action is gritty and well done. It has a distinct mood, often portraying the bleakness associated with the gangster lifestyle and there is some sparse dark humor. The pacing is good, the story is intriguing enough, good dialogue, and overall good film. 7/10
I'm going to try to avoid spoilers, but I really wanted to write a review on this one, as I loved the movie, and have seen it several times. And, of course, like I said above, I had a serious crush on character 'Alien,' and I was pretty sad when I looked her up, and she hasn't seemed to have gone anywhere with her career.
But as soon as she entered this movie, it took off, and since it kind of revolves around her, that makes sense. And it was kind of fun, watching her zero in on 'Whiz,' as he didn't seem to swift, and it appears she was going to end up with the money, as every gangster seemed not too tightly wrapped, between the crackhead boss and the low men on the totem pole, whiz and beef, she definitely could have had any one she wanted.
I thought the interplay between the Russian gangsters and the gypsies was powerful and at times hilarious, but mostly it was the Russian gangsters themselves, and their total disdain for anything other than 'gangster' living. And I suspect this movie was a lot closer to the truth than any other eastern European gangsters I've seen portrayed on film.
But in the end, she earned the 'fatale' side of her, and left me a bit confused, but still a good movie, well worth seeing, just to watch 'Alien' slinking across the screen…I hope she gets some more movies under her belt…
Yeah, this movie captures certain aspects of post-Soviet gangsters in the early 1990s. Mostly, it does an excellent job of portraying the sort of 'hive mentality' a lot of them had/have, the mindless brutality, and a general outlook on life lacking in such human characteristics as empathy and critical thinking.
I'm not sure why that bunch was so shockingly nasty at that particular time. I ran into a lot of them in the places I was in during the early 1990s, and to a man they gave the impression of not having individual souls or intelligence, and didn't seem to have an existence outside of their group. They could be fun in a biker-gang kind of way, but when anything got in their way or was perceived to be in their way the absolute lack of self-control or even self-regard was shocking. It was like an electric switch, all on or all off.
This flick manages to nail that persona, especially in a morbidly hilarious scene in which our 'heroes' kidnap and terrorize a hapless peasant who makes a gesture at their (probably stolen) car. I'd like to say the gun play and violence was over the top, but honestly, I don't think it is. It's worth watching once.