Brother (1997) on Netflix
Discharged after the Chechen war, Danila Bagrov goes to St. Petersburg to find his older brother Viktor and start a new life. Viktor, a contract killer, has work for him.
- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb7.8/1029,445 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Danila Bagrov comes home to Priozersk after his discharge from the army and the Chechen war. A scuffle with security guards at a music video shoot lands him in the local militsiya precinct, and the officer in charge lets him go if he finds work within a week. His mother sends him to St. Petersburg to look up his older brother Viktor. There Danila befriends Kat, a party girl, and Hoffman, a homeless street vendor known as the German, whom he rescues from a thug. Viktor, meanwhile, works as a hitman under the nickname the Tatar for a mob boss named Roundhead, whose target is a Chechen mafia boss who controls a market. Roundhead resents the fee Viktor asked and sets his men to watch him. Danila finds his brother, who gives him money and a job.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Brother (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Brother was shot in thirty-one days and cost about 10,000 US dollars, with many actors working for a nominal fee or for free; Svetlana Pismichenko was paid a thousand dollars for playing Sveta.
- For the last scene, Balabanov could not find an actor who could drive a truck and the stuntmen did not suit him, so the truck driver who picks up Danila was played by the film's cameraman, Sergei Astakhov.
- The Nautilus Pompilius concert that Sveta and Danila attend is actually a concert by the band Chizh & Co, and according to Svetlana Pismichenko, drunken fans almost trampled her and Bodrov in the crowd.
- In the draft, Sveta and her husband Pavel were into sadomasochism; during filming Balabanov rewrote these scenes as domestic violence, then explored the theme of BDSM in his next film, Of Freaks and Men.
- Balabanov's original concept was a film about bandits and musicians, since he was close to both, and he chose the band Nautilus Pompilius for the soundtrack because he had been friends with its vocalist Vyacheslav Butusov since his time in Sverdlovsk.
