Danila goes to his successful brother, Victor, in Petersburg to start a new life. Unknown to Danila, Victor is a contract killer, but is in hiding after asking for too much money to assassinate a Chechen mob boss. To avoid exposure, Victor convinces Danila to kill the boss instead.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.91/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
Aleksei Balabanov
Production
CTB Film Company, Gorky Film Studios, Roskomkino
Cast
Sergei Bodrov Jr., Viktor Sukhorukov, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Svetlana Pismichenko, Mariya Zhukova, Sergey Murzin, Irina Rakshina, Igor Shibanov, Andrey Fedortsov, Vladimir Ermilov, Anatoliy Gorin, Andrey Krasko, Vitaliy Matveyev, Denis Kirillov, Anatoli Zhuravlyov, Sergey Astakhov, Artur Arutyunyan, Igor Lifanov, Tatyana Zakharova, Aleksey Poluyan
Curator Review
Verdict
A lean, bruising post-Soviet crime film with a strong sense of place, attitude, and cultural specificity. Its low-budget grit, deadpan humor, and morally compromised antihero make it feel raw and immediate rather than polished.
Best for
crime-drama fans
viewers interested in post-Soviet cinema
people who like gritty, low-budget realism
fans of antihero road-movie energy
audiences drawn to 1990s gangster films with a local flavor
Skip if
you want cleanly plotted studio crime thrillers
you dislike xenophobic or politically loaded material
you prefer sympathetic protagonists
you need fast-paced action over mood and drift
Overview
Brother is a jagged snapshot of 1990s Russia, where survival, money, and violence have replaced any stable moral order. It follows Danila with the blank certainty of someone who has learned to move through chaos by treating it as normal, and that emotional flatness gives the film its strange power.
Worth noting
What stands out most is the film’s texture: the stripped-down production, the street-level realism, and the way Saint Petersburg feels both mythic and exhausted. It is less interested in plot mechanics than in atmosphere, identity, and the seduction of criminal competence.
Bottom line
The film’s reputation is complicated by its nationalist and xenophobic undercurrents, which can’t be ignored. But as a piece of post-Soviet crime cinema, it remains influential, abrasive, and unmistakably alive, especially for viewers who respond to rawness over polish.
Top Letterboxd reviews
rhesusnegative (4.5★) · 1192 likes
this is so awesome it's like russian taxi driver with extra autism
PT99 (4★) · 774 likes
I wish I could care about something as deeply as Danila cares about a Russian alt-rock band.
8/10
maul bjarkardóttir (5★) · 710 likes
To be in Sergei’s arms in a Nautilius’ concert..........
Serafima (4★) · 407 likes
don't show this to the sigma male community
Daniel Slack · 383 likes
Brother is one of the most popular contemporary, Post-Soviet Russian films. It is a low-budget, skeletal film that uses resourcelessness and simplicity to its advantage by taking the crime-thriller/gangster film and stripping the story down to wanderings into violence. There is a sense of realism embedded into the film by the DIY aesthetic (this is quite iconic for the costumes; most of which were bought on flea-markets or were simply owned by the actors). And both the fleeting genre-isms and… more Brother is one of the most popular contemporary, Post-Soviet Russian films. It is a low-budget, skeletal film that uses resourcelessness and simplicity to its advantage by taking the crime-thriller/gangster film and stripping the story down to wanderings into violence. There is a sense of realism embedded into the film by the DIY aesthetic (this is quite iconic for the costumes; most of which were bought on flea-markets or were simply owned by the actors). And both the fleeting genre-isms and… more