“Brother” is a 1997 Russian crime film. It was made on an incredibly small budget but was such a huge success in Russia that a sequel followed a few years. It’s not a bad movie and it does a good job of immersing you into 90s urban Russia but I was not particularly hooked by it.

After coming home from the conflict in Chechnya, Danila Bagrov (Sergey Bodrov “Prisoner of the Mountains”) heads to St. Petersburg to meet up with his older brother (Viktor Sukhorukov). Danila quickly becomes involved with crime as he carries out a hit. This prompts anger from other mobsters.

Throughout the movie, the Danila character is seen browsing music shops and listening to music on his portable device. He seems to utilise music as a way of making some of the duller aspects of his life more tolerable. He also claims to have only worked as a clerk during his time in the army yet seems to know how to handle his gun pretty well. He also has his own sense of justice as he helps a German that he befriends. The relationship between Danila and his older brother should have been explored a lot more (especially considering the film’s title). The other characters are not very interesting.

“Brother” has some stylish scenes when you consider that this film was made for a fraction of any Hollywood movie budget from around the same time. However, this movie could have been a lot better than it was. Lots of scenes do not really seem to go anywhere, the action sequences are a little underwhelming and I also did not get to see much about how the criminal underworld works. It seems the movie really captured the turbulent mood of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union but it just did not do all that much for me.