Cargo 200 (2007)

One of my all time favorites.

Fresh and Exciting

best movie i've ever seen.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The film was clearly made to please the Kremlin (or by order from) in time of civil unrest. The only goal of this film was to make the Russian people understand how good is the Putin government for bringing order to Russia, and how horrible and lawless was life in Russia before that. The reality of life in USSR in the 80's was for sure hard, and the Afghanistan war horrible, and the people were poor and full of uncertainty. But to say that this film "does not show a balanced picture of those years" is an understatement. Without knowing the current political situation in Russia it is hard to understand what this movie is trying to say. There are much better films to see made in Russia today without such clear political bias and without government involvement.

Unique, deeply disturbing combination of 'Last House on the Left' type horror, pitch-black political satire, and fury at the sickness of one's own society. The film was said by it's director to have been explicitly made to combat the growing nostalgia, fueled by Putin, for Soviet era Russia. Based on true events that occurred in 1984, as the Soviet Union sank ever deeper into the Afghanistan quagmire ('Cargo 200' is the code names for bodies being brought back from the war), this depiction of a 'Deliverance' type grotesque family who sell illegal booze to finance their fantasy of one day creating a utopia in the middle of nowhere, and the complete psychopath of a police captain 'friend' who protects, but ultimately turns on them, and ends up committing murder, along with rape, torture and kidnapping of a young girl who happens by – all while being paid by the government. The slow build is handled pretty brilliantly, and we're surprised over and over at exactly who turns out to do what – although the feeling of doom hovers over the film from it's first moments. By the end of the film, the depravity is so insane, and depicted in such a matter- of-fact way, that the only reaction one can have is to laugh a terribly disturbed, uncomfortable laugh. It's as if Balabanov took torture porn, but turned it into the darkest possible comedy performance-art by having it comment on the world in a bigger way (but isn't that really what all the truly great horror films do?) The cinematography is also 'beautiful' in its almost loving framing of ugliness, both human and industrial.Major plot questions are left unanswered, but that doesn't feel like sloppy film-making, but rather an intentional (if frustrating) method of making us ponder what we've just witnessed, instead of being able to walk away and forget. Some of the acting is awkward, but there are images I that will stick with me a long time, and I have the feeling the film might grow even deeper on repeated viewings. It isn't often you read various critics comparing a film to both the Coen bothers and 'Saw', or a critic saying 'it made me want to puke, and I mean that as a high complement', but it's that much a one-of- a-kind film.

I have sympathy for the view that this dark, dark comedy from Balabanov is much too culturally pointed to impress a westerner beyond the more obvious clues and intents of the writer and director. Balabanov's movie articulates the classically Russian 'tragic view of life' (articulated by Antonina: 'the sooner we die, the better for us') and it is through this prism that it views the moral and material decay of the Soviet system. Captain Zhurov's depravity and necrophilia is not psychological. The filmmaker does not even pretend to study Zhurov's motives: it is the bare fact that the police chief has authority and uses it to his own sociopath's ends that matters (Balabanov cleverly keeps the audience from discovering Zhurov's professional identity until after he is outed as an insane murderer). What makes 'Gruz 200' Balabanov's best film and a true classic is the sort-of passerby attitude of the narration, and his insistence that he is not as serious as he appears to be. He delivers the most shocking and revolting scene with a healthy dose of the absurd kind of humour(says insane mama to the visiting lady with a shotgun in her suitcase: 'too many flies this summer'), and in this he resembles Tarantino's killing-is-comedy trademark. But the Russian director actually is committed to a point of view, and acknowledgement that humans have soul, something that would fall beyond Tarantino's understanding, or at any rate, his artistic grasp. 'Sunka', the Vietnamese migrant worker is the torch of humanity in the movie. Balabanov, here and elsewhere, pokes into the renowned Russian chauvinism and racism, in choosing for his saintly innocent an Asiatic who speaks broken Russian. (Dersu Uzala, anyone ?) It appears that the 'conversion' of the atheist professor Gromov, is linked to the death of Sunka, and to his boss Aleksey's convincing argument against atheism - i.e. his refusal to believe that human 'conscience' is a material effect of Darwinian evolution. Balabanov cleverly underplays Gromov's visit to the church by making the priest absent. (This saves the movie from turning preachy). The director also makes excellent use of the industrial wasteland (so much reminiscent of Tarkovsky's "Zone" in the "Stalker") and the dilapidating housing standards in the late Soviet era, as the background for his farce.

It's a horror film about maniac with details of his crimes. It's not about the USSR and it's not a historical movie. The director pretends on a great depth of meaning but really it's horror in "social realism" style. If you never live in the USSR in 80th you can think that the whole life was the same like in this movie. I.e. maniacs, criminals integrated in the police and in the society. But reality differs from this like Charles Manson differs from usual man. Balabanov is a good provoker. He wanted sensation at any cost and he received it with naturalistic acts of violence and with decomposing men bodies. It's a very cheap way but if you haven't talent and ideas just remake "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in another surrounding and call it drama instead of horror and voilà - you are modern fancy new wave director!