Dead Man's Bluff
Russian DVD cover
Directed byAleksei Balabanov
Written byAleksei Balabanov
Stas Mokhnachev
Produced bySergei Dolgoshein
Sergei Selyanov
StarringAleksei Panin
Dmitri Dyuzhev
Nikita Mikhalkov
CinematographyYevgeni Privin
Edited byTatyana Kuzmichyova
Music byVyacheslav Butusov
Production
company
STV Cinema Company
Release date
  • May 24, 2005 (2005-05-24)
Running time
105 min.
CountryRussia
LanguageRussian

Dead Man's Bluff or Zhmurki (Russian: Жмурки) is a 2005 Russian black comedy/crime film.[1][2]

Director Aleksei Balabanov, who directed Brother and Brother 2, uses cameo performances, by Russia's most prominent actors. The film depicts the anarchistic reality of the free-market streets of Russia in the beginning of 1990s, where the only real liberty was the freedom to kill.[3][4][5]

Plot

The film opens in 2005 with a professor lecturing a group of university students on the primitive accumulation of capital. By way of example, she mentions how capital was accumulated during the 1990s.

The film flashes to Nizhny Novgorod in 1995, to an interrogation scene between a torturer, nicknamed "the Executioner", and a gagged prisoner in a morgue. Before the torturer can start the interrogation, three masked men barge in with pistols. A gunfight ensues and one of the masked men is killed as well as the prisoner and the torturer has been shot in the stomach. The leader of the masked men takes off his disguise and it is revealed that he is a police officer (nicknamed "the Cop"). Stepan shoots the man in the head and then shoots his own partner. Stepan takes a piece of paper from the torturer's pocket and seems excited by what he reads on it.

The film then flashes forward to 2005. Sergei is now a State Duma deputy and Simon is his assistant. Together, they own a securities trading firm. Mikhalych now works for them as a security guard, and his son Vladik works for the duo as an errand boy. Looking back, Sergei tells Simon that he thinks that Kaban ripped them off when buying the heroin from them. Simon objects and says that there is no need to kill Kaban to which Sergei agrees. Simon states that living in Russia, compared to the 1990s, has become more difficult.


Cast

Production

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.

Reception

This film is a first attempt at a comedic movie by Balabanov. The movie serves as a dark humor farce on typical gangster movies that were prevalent within Russian society in the 1990s. The movie received mixed reviews, with some critics writing disparaging reviews stating that the plot left much to be desired and most of the jokes fell flat, while others argued that the movie was a successful attempt by Balabanov to add a new movie genre to his repertoire.

Literature

  • Florian Weinhold (2013), Path of Blood: The Post-Soviet Gangster, His Mistress and Their Others in Aleksei Balabanov's Genre Films, Reaverlands Books: North Charleston, SC: pp. 115–138.


References

  1. ↑ "Жмурки". VokrugTV.
  2. ↑ "Никита Михалков: Я здесь хулиганю. И мне это нравится..." Russia-1.
  3. ↑ Климентьева А. «Жмурки», «Сибирский цирюльник», «Мисс миллионерша»: Самые узнаваемые «нижегородские» фильмы // Комсомольская правда. — 2016
  4. ↑ "Анатолий Журавлёв: «Люблю морозную зиму, русскую баню и козье молоко!»". Archived from the original on 2017-04-04. Retrieved 2017-04-04.
  5. ↑ Александр Аммосов (2022-03-05). "В России выпустят в повторный прокат «Брата», «Жмурки» и другие фильмы Алексея Балабанова". Игромания (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2022-03-05.
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