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The Major
Filmmaker Yury Bykov’s second feature, starring
Denis Shvedov and Irina Nizina, takes a gritty look at
Russian police corruption BY JORDAN MINTZER
Like an episode of The Shield
transplanted to the snow-swept
Russian countryside, writerdirector
Yury Bykov’s The Major
is a tense, handheld police thriller
filled with dirty cops, abrupt
violence and a relentless, overriding
sense of nastiness. It’s also
rather heavy-handed in parts and
not necessarily original in the
story department, but its rapid
pacing and potent performances
should make it a viable pickup for
distributors specializing in exotic
genre fare.
Premiering in competition in
the Critics’ Week sidebar, Bykov’s
second feature, following 2010’s
Live!, is also a one-man-band
affair, with the filmmaker credited
as writer, editor and composer, as
well as playing a character who
Sobolev (Shvedov) makes one mistake after another.
gets an, er, major ass-whipping
from various members of the local
police force. So while there’s no
doubt that the 32-year-old Bykov
is committed to his art, he also
overreaches in places — especially
with the film’s excessive score —
but otherwise shows a knack for
building intense set pieces, including
a nail-biting shootout that
makes strong use of off-screen
space and vivid sound design.
Set within 24 hours, the action
kicks off quickly enough with
commander Sergey Sobolev
(Denis Shvedov) racing his SUV
across icy country roads to join his
wife, who’s giving birth at a clinic
in nearby Ryazan, a small city
southeast of Moscow. Along the
way, his car skids into a 7-yearold
boy, killing him instantly. But
rather than calling an ambulance
or doing anything remotely
reasonable, Sobolev takes the
kid’s wailing mother, Irina (Irina
Nizina), hostage and phones a fellow
officer, Pasha (Ilya Isaev), to
come and clean up the mess.
What follows is a very long day
of unethical policing, as Sobolev
and Pasha try to cover up the
accident. The bloody chain of
events spirals further and further
out of control, until Sobolev takes
stock of his actions, leading to a
denouement that pits him against
the corrupt unit he has so desperately
been trying to protect.
Filmed with lots of gritty,
over-the-shoulder camerawork,
The Major is mostly a well-paced
affair, even if Bykov misses some
plot points (whatever happened
to the wife?) and resorts to dramatic
overkill in order to prove his
point — basically that Russian law
enforcement is one big drunken
motherload of corruption.
Alongside the solid, if rugged,
tech credits, the performances are
keyed up all the way through, with
Nizina particularly explosive as
the tormented mom and Isaev —
who looks like a Slavic Matthias
Schoenaerts — slick and scary as
the ruthless, ball-busting Pasha.
Critics’ Week
Cast Denis Shvedov, Irina Nizina
Director-screenwriter
Yury Bykov
99 minutes
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