| Dead Man's Bluff | |
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Russian DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Aleksei Balabanov |
| Produced by | Sergei Dolgoshein Sergei Selyanov |
| Written by | Aleksei Balabanov Stas Mokhnachev |
| Starring | Nikita Mikhalkov Dmitri Dyuzhev Aleksei Panin |
| Music by | Vyacheslav Butusov |
| Cinematography | Yevgeni Privin |
| Editing by | Tatyana Kuzmichyova |
| Distributed by | STV Cinema Company |
| Release date(s) | May 24, 2005 |
| Running time | 105 min. |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
Dead Man's Bluff, or Zhmurki (Russian: Жмурки) is a 2005 Russian black comedy/crime film.
Director Aleksei Balabanov, who directed Brother and Brother 2 , 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 Quentin Tarantino/Guy Ritchie-style crime films of the 90s. The film suggests that in the mean free-market streets of Russia in the beginning of 90-s, the only real liberty was the freedom to kill.
Approximately 50 liters of fake blood were used in the film. With the exception of a few scenes in Moscow, the film was shot in Tver, the city formerly known as Kalinin, and Nizhny Novgorod, the city known as Gorky in Soviet times
The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Nikita Mikhalkov (best known to American audiences for his work in Burnt by the Sun), Dmitri Dyuzhev, Aleksei Panin, Sergei Makovetsky, Igor Sukachev, Viktor Sukhorukov, and Renata Litvinova. Actually, there are more than 20 Russian-movie stars in the film, but it's not easy to recognize them immediately since they are all in disguise.
The film opens with a group of university students at a lecture. The professor tells them that "start-up capital is what begins everything - with it, you can start a business and multiply your investment many times over. The key thing is how to get it...". As an example, she starts with a story that happened ten years ago.
The movie flashes back to a Russian town outside Moscow (Nizhniy Novgorod) in "the 90s" where we meet two criminals, members of "bratva" (one of the local racket gangs), Simon and Sergei. These small time hoodlums are working for the local mob boss, Sergei Mikhailovich (played by Nikita Mikhalkov). Sergei Mikhailovich always wears a magenta colored jacket and is on his cell phone most of the time, which was extremely rare back then. Sergei Mikhailovich wishes to "finish off" one chemist with a nickname “Doctor” (played by Aleksei Serebryakov), who makes drugs in his laboratory. He sends his bandits Sergei and Simon to capture him and to get the drugs. Sergei is playing a somewhat clever gangster and is in charge of most of the missions; Simon is just a killer. Unfortunately, they get into a trap and end up killing the “Doctor”.
Sergei Mikhailovich is very mad with their performance but gives them another chance to straighten up. He wants them to visit one of his partners, the Advocate (played by Dmitrij Pevcov) and exchange a suitcase of money with a suitcase of drugs. However, they end up failing the mission once again. Another main character, a policeman Stepan (played by Viktor Sukhorukov) knows about the mission and is trying to overthrow it, using his own band of three men. Policeman’s band end up stealing the case with drugs (instead of the case filled with money). Sergei Mikhailovich orders his bandits to kill Stepan and to bring back the suitcase with the drugs. Simon brutally tortures Stepan, gets all the information about the other band and eventually kills him.
After, Sergei and Simon go out to hunt the policeman’s men and to find the missing suitcase. They come to one of the apartments and find one of the three men, Baklazhan (played by Grigoriy Siyatvinda). While Simon tortures him in order to find out where they hid the suitcase, other members of the group show up. Sergei and Simon end up finding the suitcase in the oven. After, Sergei offers three men to play the Russian roulette game. All of them end up dying, but Baklazhan shots Sergei in the stomach. While Sergei is getting help from Simon’s college buddy (med-student), Simon finds Sergei’s folder with a metal sheet inside of it, realizing that Sergei is a coward and that he would never play the real Russian roulette.
Sergei and Simon understand that Sergei Mikhailovich will not forgive them the failure once again and end up going to Moscow with the suitcase of drugs.
In 2005, Sergei and Simon are politics in Russia. Sergei Mikhalovich works for them as a security guard.
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