The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. An honest man, he is up against an entire system of corrupted bureaucrats. At stake are the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dorm that is at risk of collapsing within the span of the night.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.6/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.99/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 83
TMDB: 7.8/10
Director
Yury Bykov
Production
Rock Films
Cast
Artyom Bystrov, Natalya Surkova, Yuriy Tsurilo, Boris Nevzorov, Kirill Poluhin, Alexander Korshunov, Olga Samoshina, Darya Moroz, Sergei Artsybashev, Elena Panova, Dmitriy Kulichkov, Ilya Isaev, Maksim Pinsker, Lyubov Rudenko, Irina Nizina, Gordey Kobzev, Pyotr Barancheev, Angelina Rimashevskaya, Andrey Sidorenko, Nina Antyukhova
Curator Review
Verdict
A grim, forceful social drama about one decent man trying to stop a catastrophe in a rotten system. It’s blunt and relentlessly bleak, but the urgency, moral clarity, and escalating tension make it a powerful watch for viewers who can handle despair with their outrage.
Best for
Viewers who like bleak political and social dramas
Fans of corruption stories with a strong moral center
People drawn to tense, real-time crisis narratives
Audiences who appreciate uncompromising, issue-driven cinema
Skip if
You want subtle, ambiguous storytelling
You need emotional uplift or a hopeful ending
You dislike heavy-handed social criticism
You prefer character studies over systems-driven drama
Overview
The Fool is a punishing but effective portrait of civic rot. It takes a simple premise — one man discovers a building may collapse — and turns it into a nightmare about indifference, self-preservation, and institutional decay. The film’s power comes from its escalating sense of urgency: every attempt to do the right thing meets another wall of cowardice or corruption.
Worth noting
What makes it linger is how little it romanticizes heroism. The protagonist is not a savior, just an honest worker who keeps insisting that human lives should matter. Around him, the film builds a society where that basic idea feels radical. The result is blunt, sometimes didactic, but also emotionally relentless and hard to shake.
Bottom line
If you respond to bleak social realism and stories about one person against a whole machine, this is very much worth your time. If you need nuance, warmth, or a less confrontational style, its severity may feel exhausting. But as a piece of angry, urgent cinema, it lands with force.
Top Letterboxd reviews
L L (4★) · 236 likes
"We live like animals and die like animals because we're nobodies to each other."
The shot when Dima dashes outside and looks up and sees a 9-story crack in the apartment building is one of the most thrilling moments in cinema.
A desperate movie about a desperate society.
James Reynov (4.5★) · 195 likes
Man this movie is heavy. If art is supposed to be a reflection of life, then life in modern Russia is so so awfully hopeless, and it's not helping itself improve at all. This movie, more heavy-handed and depressing than Leviathan, is another biting film against the Russia government, and the corruption found in its bureaucracy. I'm sure if you told the director of this film that good things happen to good people or the fact that karma exists, I'm… more Man this movie is heavy. If art is supposed to be a reflection of life, then life in modern Russia is so so awfully hopeless, and it's not helping itself improve at all. This movie, more heavy-handed and depressing than Leviathan, is another biting film against the Russia government, and the corruption found in its bureaucracy. I'm sure if you told the director of this film that good things happen to good people or the fact that karma exists, I'm… more
svetlana 🧣 (5★) · 108 likes
моя страна поднялась с колен
во весь свой отрицательный рост
Mike D'Angelo (3.5★) · 89 likes
61/100
What I wrote about Bykov's previous film, The Major, applies equally here:
One of the most deeply cynical movies I've ever seen, the moral of which is essentially that every effort to do the right thing not only fails but makes things much worse. [...] I watch plenty of depressing films, but it's rare for one to inspire this degree of sheer hopelessness.
Not sure why I slightly prefer The Fool, because it's considerably more didactic, stopping cold at… more