A Moscow detective crashes a provincial cover-up where everyone's guilty of something.
An armed attack on cash messengers is undertaken near a trade center in a small provincial town, an agent of Ministry of Internal Affairs dies in crossfire. A crime investigator major Rovnin (V. Kuznetsov), who appeared to be a close friend of the deceased, comes from Moscow to assist in the investigation. He is astonished at how savagely his friend was shot, as if someone was revenging. Local investigating bodies are convinced that they can manage this and arent too satisfied with the arrival of Moscow expert. They try to handle this as soon as possible, even at the cost of mistake. But the majors task is to find the killer, in spite of the fact that he is left nothing but to hold the investigation by himself.
Acting
Kuznetsov's weary determination anchors every scene
Direction
Vorontsov captures crumbling Soviet infrastructure as character
Writing
Script simmers with bureaucratic hostility and personal codes
Director
Olgerd Vorontsov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot during the Soviet Union's final collapse, the film's rotting infrastructure mirrors its dying empire. Provincial towns like this became crime havens as centralized authority dissolved.
Director Vorontsov never made another feature — this singular work captures a specific late-Soviet melancholy that vanished with the 90s.
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