Dead Man's Bluff

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Audience Member A pair of exceedingly dumb gangster's lose a suitcase full of heroin and need to get it back. Bloody mayhem ensues. Aleksey Balabanov partly satirizes the 90's era Russian gangster flicks that made his name internationally, but also satirizes power relations in Russian society. I get the distinct feeling that this would feel like sharper satire to me if I was Russian. It was a mildly amusing, very bloody decent time, but I wasn't all that amused by what transpired. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review ari v Take early Tarantino, make him very Russian, add an extra table spoon or two of very dark homur - boom. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member (***): [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] This film sure is different even with familiar tones involved. This is one violent and darkly funny "gangster" film that reminded me of [i]Lock, Stock[/i] but heads in directions I didn't expect. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Does watching two movies from the same director in a week make it a festival? If so, my Alexei Balabanov festival started with Brother, which I credited, despite low budget values, for being a solid story. I get the more recent Dead Man's Bluff and I see the same production values, which may reflect my lack of understanding on how the Russian film industry works to assume should be better by this stage, and that is a turn off when one considers that the characters and tone of this film, while similar to Brother in some ways, are not drawn as well. Here we see an attempt to forcefully add a sense of macabre humour that works at some points, but at others is transparent and not funny. There is quite a bit of ultra-violence which adds some flavour to things, but the general malaise of the aimless characters wandering around can lead one's eyes to begin shutting. Acting performances are uneven with most tending towards amateur style. You can even note a couple of scenes where the director is evidently trying to get in some ladies pants by obviously including them in the production. They walk by the foreground in completely obvious fashion, as also a woman playing a waitress poses. At least the latter had an actual role. This is distracting and again looks amateur. It provides nothing a film fan hasn't seen before, while reminding me of a cheap Pulp Fiction knock-off. So ends my Balabanov festival. It seems his movies are all done this way. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Extreme, quirky and darkly funny. Something like the bastard child of Tarantino's and Guy Ritchie's films, yet much more original ! Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member "Let's kill the negro. I don't like them." - Simon. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Dead Man's Bluff

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