No native director of any consequence has painted the corruption of contemporary Russia with a beadier accuracy than Alexei Balabanov, even if most of his films are weakened by commercial considerations. War, like Brother and Of Freaksand Men, spares no one, while at the same time shrewdly eyeing up its public.
It is set in Chechnya, where robbers and bloodthirsty clan leaders fight Russian soldiers who don't want to be there - led, according to Balabanov, by idiots. A vicious guerrilla leader captures two soon-to-be-married English actors (Ian Kelly and Ingaborga Dapkunaitel) apparently touring Hamlet, and a group of Russians. He slits the throats of the Russians, except for Alexei Chadov's computer operator. Then he sends the actor and the computer operator home to raise a ransom for the fiancee. The actor can't get the money but, with enough cash perhaps to satisfy the guerrilla leader, he asks the computer operator to take him back to the war zone. The Russian, who owes him nothing but is desperate to save his badly wounded commander, consents to go. War, however, is a very dirty business in these parts and, while the actor, in order to raise more money, shoots the scene with a digital camera, his protector shoots those who get in their way with his gun.
War would be little more than a slightly illogical and bloody adventure story were it not shot and directed with such conviction, painting the bloody mess of the war and the corruption back home with equal frankness. It is difficult to tear your eyes from these two men: the Russian an ordinary young man adapting to circumstances in a way only his macho father would admire, and the Brit a weak fool determined to prove he is not by rescuing his girl from rape and worse. Hollywood would never put one of its stars in either part. But then they would have re-edited Balabanov's starkly ironic ending, too.
· At Odeon West End, London WC2, tonight. Box office: 020-7928 3232.
