Oleg Sentsov recreates the gangster era of the 90s, which began after the collapse of the USSR. The film will have exactly what you expect: brutality, violence and fear. Let’s share our impressions!
This week, the long-awaited crime drama “Rhino” by Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov was released. The film was supposed to be released several years ago, but due to the illegal arrest of Sentsov in Russia, it was suspended.
When Sentsov was released, the process of filming “Rhino” resumed. Producers from Poland and Germany helped in the production. What’s more, the streaming giant Netflix bought the rights to show the film.
We watched the film and are ready to tell you briefly about the plot and provide you with a review by film critic and journalist Oleksii Rosovetskyi and editor Anastasia Rogozhinskaya (these will be two different views on the same project)
“Rhino” is not an analogy of “Brigade”!
The crime story tells about the tumultuous 90s in Ukraine: bandits, violence, murder, late repentance. Many can say that this is almost an analogy of a Russian series. But I assure you, no!
When in “Brigade” they show the 90s more from the romantic side, then “Rhino” recreates those times as they were: obscene, pathetic and cruel. In the film, we can clearly see the development of a simple boy, Vova (Serhiy Filimonov), into a bloody bandit who beats his rivals to death without feeling guilty.
Heroes will dance at discotheques to the hit It’s my life, squeeze money from “simpletons”. Eventually, the characters turn into bandits in leather kurtas with stone faces. They will hang out in cottages with girls, shoot competitors and keep everyone at bay.
Also in “Rhinoceros” there are many attributes without which the plot would be incomplete. For example, cardboard boxes for trying things on at bazaars, trendy jeans, t-shirts with the image of Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. And black turtlenecks, gold chains, flip-top cell phones and a BMW “five”. Probably, many people remember it.
The plot of the drama unfolds around the main character Vova, who later received the nickname “Rhino”. At the beginning of the film, we are told about the period of his life in an ordinary Ukrainian family: little Vova plays in the yard, his sister gets married, dad returns from prison, brother is taken to Afghanistan, mother is the talisman of the family.
Even closer to the collapse of the USSR, the family is also disintegrating: the brother dies, the sister runs away from her husband, the father drinks, beats the mother and ends up behind bars again, and Vova turns into a thug.
The rhinoceros is an anti-hero! He is a bad person who resorts to cruelty without resisting evil. For his actions, the most valuable thing is taken from him – his wife and daughter.
Spoiler! The scene when the Rhino covers the dead palm of his daughter, who straightened up from under the sheet, with his huge male palm was very touching. It is this moment that becomes a turning point for Vova and his life starts to go to waste.
The action of Sentsov’s film takes place in the memories Rhino shares with a stranger in a car. It is here that he begins to analyze his life. And this is exactly what it indicates the bandit, though an anti-hero, still seeks repentance. In the final, the Rhino seems to…
Verdicts of film critics and viewers
We present to your attention two opinions of people from different eras – a person who lived at that time and remembers it well and a person who was born after this period.
Oleksiy Rosovetskyi is a film critic
This is only the second film of the director Oleg Sentsov, who for a long time was perceived primarily as a political figure – after Sevastopol native Sentsov was sentenced in Russia to a twenty-year prison term on charges of organizing a terrorist act.
The clear political case of the Ukrainian director caused the indignation of the world film community (he was supported by such figures as Pedro Almodovar, Aki Kaurismaki and Bela Tarr). In Russia itself, such polar figures as Oleksandr Sokurov and Nikita Mikhalkov demanded the release of the director.
Sentsov could not help but understand that after returning from the Yakut camp, his next directorial work would be at the peak of attention. So it is worth considering that the surprise from the movie “Rhino” can also be explained by inflated expectations.
No miracle happened: Sentsov’s new film “suffers” from all childhood diseases of young Ukrainian cinema, which is still experiencing the period of debuts and is still in search of its own original film language. “Rhino” was supposed to be released ten years ago, before Sentsov’s conviction, but the film, in a certain sense, remained so at that time. This is the story of a village hooligan, who in the nineties goes through the typical path of a bandit: defeats his “brigade”, conducts criminal wars with other “brigades”, “rises” and one day loses everything.
There are several bright scenes in the film – for example, a very impressive prologue in which the story of the hero’s coming of age is told, as if filmed in one shot. Or the scene at the shooting range to the children’s song about friends (“что мне снег, что мне зной, что мне дождик пролывной”), in which bandits with machine guns look like cheerful children playing a game of war, which in the future will turn into a full-fledged civil war. But, unfortunately, there are more disadvantages.
First of all, the problem lies in the main character played by non-professional actor, Azov fighter and political activist Serhiy Filimonov. It would seem that “Rhinoceros” formally fits into the tradition of the criminal genre, as “Easter girls” in the range from “The Sopranos” to the films of Oleksiy Balabanov should convince us. But the main character is not able to evoke sympathy from the viewer, let alone sympathy – he is a stupid aggressive scumbag, devoid of the slightest charm of Paul Mooney or Al Pacino, who played a similar “wild” type in both “Scarfaces”.
The second mistake of the creators of the film seems to be that “Rhino” is already too conventional for a crime film (we know almost nothing about the criminal business of the main character, we do not understand the intrigue in his confrontation with other gangsters, one of whom is played by the cult Kyiv writer Volodymyr “Adolfich” (Nesterenko), in the finale, the parable turns into a crooked path. But in fact “Rhino ” says nothing about people or time, although I personally hoped for a reflection on the notorious nineties.
At the end, the simple moral of this fable is that being a bandit is bad, and killing people is even worse. You involuntarily expect more from the director, who raised such an important, big topic and himself gained experience of confrontation with the repressive state machine.
Anastasia Rogozhinska – editor
I did not see that bloody period, but I know a lot about it. My childhood was spent in the years of the “departure” of that bandit time. I know what “cardboards” are in the bazaar, fashionable jeans, village discos, hooligans trying to look like bandits, etc.
“Rhino” is an uncensored film about banditry, which had not been featured in Ukrainian cinema before. The film is devoid of romance. There are shocking scenes of violence, murder, betrayal and hopelessness. That is why the film is worth watching to analyze that past.
It seems to me that with this film, Ukraine is forever saying goodbye to the stormy 1990s. “Rhino” seems to warn us against the mistakes of that time and forces us to awaken our conscience!
So we shared with you our thoughts about the movie “Rhino”. We hope you were impressed. But whether it is worth watching or not – everyone decides for himself!
