Brother

A young man back from military service cannot find work and goes to his older brother in Petersburg. The brother works as a contract killer and brings him in. The film shows nineteen-nineties Russia without softening it: no money, rotting flats, a city where nobody trusts anybody. The hero is calm, polite and kills without hesitation; the narrative does not explain the contradiction, and that is where the discomfort comes from. Aleksei Balabanov wrote and directed. Sergei Bodrov Jr. leads; he was killed in an avalanche a few years later. It became a cult film in Russia and a sequel followed. A real warning: the character uses openly racist and discriminatory language throughout and the narrative never corrects him. Its popularity in Russia has been argued over on exactly that point.