Read more
A Molotov cocktail of gruesome carnage, eccentric characters, and off-beat humor, Dead Man's Bluff casts a bracingly cynical eye on recent Eastern European history. Director Aleksei Balabanov (Brother) uses "uniformly ace" (Variety) cameo performances, by Russia's most prominent actors, to send up both the greed-is-good mentality of the newly democratized former Soviet Union and the self-conscious Tarantino/Guy Ritchie-style crime films of the 90's. This ferocious farce suggests that on the mean free-market streets of modern day Russia, the only real liberty is the freedom to kill.
Trigger-happy sibling assassins Simon (Dmitri Dyuzhev) and Sergei (Aleksei Panin) work as errand boys for Mikhailovich (Nikita Mikhalkov - Oscar® winning director of Burnt by the Sun), the sadistic kingpin of a provincial Russian town. But after brains Sergei and brawn Simon bungle a crucial drug deal, and a crooked cop's death squad grabs their briefcase of "hell powder" heroin, Mikhailovich's patience wears thin. The brother's life and death quest to reclaim their stash initiates a messy turf war of beatings, torture and close-quarter gun-play. But as the bodies pile up, Simon and Sergei discover that in the circus-mirror world of capitalist New Russia, cops, gangsters, lawbreakers, and lawmakers can be interchangeable.
