The Diamond Arm (1998)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

THE DIAMOND ARM is a Russian comedy about diamond smuggling and one inept fool finding himself up against powers stacked against him. It's about a chap who through various plot twists ends up getting a stash of diamonds hidden inside his arm cast, and the shenanigans that follow when the gangsters to whom the diamonds belong give chase.Unfortunately for me I didn't find the comedy in this film to be particularly funny despite the best efforts. The humour is very specific to Russia in the late 1960s and thus doesn't really translate well to a modern Western viewer. Some bits are mildly amusing and that's about it. Saying that, the film does have good production values and enthusiastic actors, it's simply that I didn't find it funny in comparison to something more slapstick-orientated and accessible like OPERATION 'Y' AND OTHER SHURIK'S ADVENTURES.

Mistaken for a professional contrabandist, a bumbling tourist is given an arm cast full of smuggled goods and inadvertently becomes a government spy after going to the police in this energetic Soviet comedy. Once voted as the funniest Russian comedy of time, 'The Diamond Arm' certainly does an impressive job incorporating various forms of humour. The first five minutes, for example, play out as a dialogue-free silent comedy, but later on there are also pratfalls, sight gags and lines that crack with wit. At its zaniest, the chief smuggler has a red tinted dream in which he is tormented by a laughing black cat (!), though the most amusing moments come from characters narrating their thoughts out loud, whether it be the protagonist's paranoia over a taxi ride or his wife's concern that he is cheating on her. Less successful are the film's attempts at satire - or perhaps this angle is just lost on a western viewer. By some accounts, the film offers a sharp and biting parody of life under the Soviet regime, but ostensibly, it is just an offbeat motion picture about things going incredibly wrong. Yuriy Nikulin (reportedly a former circus clown) does okay as a man out of his depth, wearing the much sought-after cast, but the best moments are had by Andrey Mironov as the actual contrabandist who was meant to be given the cast. Whether it be repeatedly failing to knock Nikulin unconscious during a fishing trip, being kicked in the mouth during a drunken dance or fondling the precious cast, Mironov is simply sensational in a rather thankless role.

a comedy with many virtues - the director, the script, the performance of Yuri Nikulin, the dialog and the wise manner to critic the Soviet regime. part from a long and precious Russian comedies, it seduce first for Gayday courage. because the fake crime story is a precise fresco of society. and the dialogs reflects in great measure that "sin". than, it is a deep human comedy, the small incorrect details , the use of innocence and, maybe, the end, does it a form of parable , more than satire. a film for each age, beautiful and fresh, full of emotion and laughter. an old fashion Russian film. who can reminds, in a crazy period, the importance of small real important ingredients of life.

It's the mostly liked by the several generations of the Russian people comedy of Leonid Gaidai together with 'Operatsiya Y' and 'Kavkazskaya plennitsa', full of light irony and brilliant folksy humor of the late soviet time. The performance of the main actors (Andrei Mironov, Yuri Nikulin and Anatoli Papanov) is absolutely superb. Perhaps though it's not much appreciated amongst some high-minded intellectuals, which have their own cinema.