Mikhail Ulyanov Movies

Stanislav Govorukhin directs this revenge drama that skewers both that country's pandemic corruption and nouveau riche thugs. Ivan Fedorovich (Mikhail Ulyanov) is a former railway worker who served during WWII as a sharp shooter in a crack Voroshilov regiment. Long retired, Ivan lives with his attractive teenaged granddaughter Katya (Anna Sinyakina), while her executive mother chases both business and men abroad. One day, Katya is picked up by a trio of wealthy young "New Russians" who have a taste for expensive cars and violent Western movies. They take her to a neighboring apartment complex, get her drunk, and then take turns raping her. The three boast that she is not the first girl they have ravaged and will not be the last. When Katya staggers home and tells her grandfather what happened, he immediately informs the police. The cops arrest the rapists and beat a confession out of them. Yet before the criminal trial can proceed, the district inspector (Vladislav Galkin), who coincidentally is the father of one of the rapists, orders the charges be dropped. After angrily complaining to a series of unreceptive bureaucrats, Ivan decides to take manners into his own hands using his old marksmanship expertise and a black market rifle. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This absorbing movie is from beginning to end, no more than a dialogue that happens between a now-divorced couple when the ex-husband visits his former wife in her two-room apartment, intending to destroy her pending marriage to a colleague who has control over him and his career. Apparently the husband has always done whatever he could to further his own advancement, even at the expense of family and friends. Tension mounts as he tries to manipulate his ex-wife by any means possible. These scenes were shot over a seven-week period of stage rehearsals for a play that finally did not open, so the filmed play was released as this movie. First shown at the Moscow Film Festival in 1983, it shared the FIPRESCI (International Association of Film Journalists) Critics' Prize. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Soviet filmmaker Gleb Panfilov has never shirked from expressing his own views on film, no matter who's calling the shots in the Politburo. Originally titled Tema, it tells the story of a young man who has allowed himself to be victimized by The System. The protagonist thinks of himself as an artist, but his inner weakness prohibits him from rising above the conformist mediocrity expected of him. Motivating the story's denouement is a female character, a carry-over from Panfilov recently completed trilogy of films in which a woman was center of attention. Available only in a radically censored version for many years, Theme was not given a general release in its uncut form until 1986, seven years after its completion. It won several festival awards, including Berlin's Golden Bear. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide