The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment

Ivan Afanasyevich is a retired man living with his granddaughter Katya. There are three young men in the same building; they have money, their families are powerful, and nobody in the neighbourhood interferes with them. They call Katya up to their flat and attack her there. The girl comes home and her grandfather goes to the police. A case is opened. Then the file stops: one of the young men's fathers works in the police, lawyers step in, and the prosecutor drops it. Ivan tries every official route and all of them close. Then he finds a rifle at the market. He starts measuring the windows in the building opposite. Stanislav Govorukhin directs. Mikhail Ulyanov plays Ivan and Anna Sinyakina plays Katya. It is a Russian production. The title comes from a badge given to good marksmen in the Soviet period; the grandfather holds that badge and the detail carries the whole irony of the narrative. It was made at the end of the nineties and takes the collapse of the legal order in Russia as its direct subject. The film found wide resonance in Russia and opened an argument about revenge. The narrative does not celebrate revenge; the road Ivan chooses produces no solution either, and the film shows that. Mikhail Ulyanov's performance carries the picture and the character is not drawn as a hero. Its limit is form; the narrative moves straight ahead and is plain as cinema. Who it is for: viewers who like Russian cinema and revenge drama on social ground. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the scene of the attack hard, and the narrative bleak.