The "kid" of the regiment: how Kalyuzhny played a Donetsk volunteer
The most successful novelty of this weekend is Andrey Simonov's military action film "The Kid" starring Gleb Kalyuzhny as a stormtrooper in Mariupol. He is currently in the top 5 of the Russian box office and is likely to remain there after the weekend. The script was written with the participation of the prototype of the main character, Pavel Chertok, who had won back several months, and Kalyuzhny himself went to serve after filming. Oleg Vasilkov, Polina Agureeva and Oscar Kucera also starred in the film. Izvestia looked at this picture and found a lot of unexpected things in it.
What is the movie "Kid" about
The military action game "Malysh" presents an exhibition in which 2022 is a natural continuation of the civil war in Ukraine, which had lasted eight years by this point. This tragedy is given through a single family, where a mother and one of her sons are for Ukraine and live in Mariupol, Ukraine, together with their stepfather, an officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And the father and son are for Russia, and they live in Donetsk.
A shot from the movie "The Kid"
Rather, the son just writes rap and dreams of performing at a cool concert. His name is Dima, and he is the main character of the film, Kalyuzhny plays him. All we know about him is that he has an artistic taste. He is frankly annoyed when his father tries to read him his clumsy poems, where "I will walk along the road through the fire, through the trenches, they broke in to death," and then suddenly "the breeze subsides," "I remember you, pressing myself against the wall," and "losses are now a given for me."
In the fall of 2022, his father enlists as a volunteer and immediately dies, and Dima, who buried him, joins an assault squad to go with him to Mariupol and save his mother from death in the midst of hostilities. His call sign is Kid, but Dima is a lively and strong guy, knows how to fight and does not go into his pocket for a word, but he won't remember rap anymore.
What they talk about in "The Kid"
Quite a few films have already been released about the siege of Mariupol — perhaps more than about any other settlement where military operations were conducted after 2022. Director Andrey Simonov had previously shot the mini-series "20/22", and there was also "At the Edge of the Abyss" — few chronotopes were so interested in both the press and cinematographers.
Nevertheless, the "kid" in this row looks as cocky as Dima in the Russian assault company. In general, he tries to give less pathos and more irony, sarcasm and, perhaps, real memories of the prototype of the main character Pavel Chertok, who, by the way, went with the call sign Poet until he became a Baby. Wasn't it he who suggested that the authors insert a short scene where the hero meets an acquaintance on the street of the destroyed Mariupol?
"Are our people on the other side now?" "What is it?" she asks timidly.
— Which ones are ours? Dima answers her, confused.
A shot from the movie "The Kid"
The remark of an officer brandishing a weapon, who knows everything about everything, also seems to be recorded on the cuffs. When he hears that Dima is writing rap, he reacts quite innocently.:
— This is not a culture. I'd rather shoot him right here so I don't spit on the TV.
And the aphoristic dialogue with a dark-skinned American romantic who serves in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is already quite striking.:
"What do you say, Sooty?"
— Russia…
— That's right! When you don't know what to say, just say it!
Following Kubrick
The actual action part of the film demonstrates both the author's watching and, at the same time, an attempt to make a movie about major military operations with an obviously very modest budget. So, dramaturgically, "The Kid" repeats Stanley Kubrick's "All-metal Shell", where after the training camp (here, however, it takes less time, because the hero is in a hurry to save his mother), the Americans immediately fall into the Vietnamese hell, and some of the heroes to whom we managed to get attached quickly die right before our eyes in the first The same battle. Andrey Simonov is trying to convey Kubrick's dynamics here using almost the same techniques, and Dima's baptism of fire therefore looks quite convincing.
A shot from the movie "The Kid"
For a rating of 16+ (although why would a military action game need such a rating?) everything is pretty tough here: fights, shooting in narrow corridors, no one is particularly trying to take prisoners, everyone on both sides is working to destroy the enemy as quickly as possible.
At some point, when Dima controls the reconnaissance drone, what is happening turns into a video game where everything seems to be made up. Soldiers are running, tanks are exploding. Such an optical illusion.
Of course, the viewer can sometimes ask the film uncomfortable questions. For example, in the documentaries of those battles, it is clearly audible that the military mostly communicate in obscenities. It is clear that the mat should not sound in a feature film today, but still the fighters speak too smoothly. Perhaps deliberately, to emphasize that the same people were in the trenches on different sides, the Ukrainian military here all speak Russian. We will not hear any of their battle songs, nor any mention of anyone from the leadership of Ukraine. But there is a scene where American instructors mistakenly call Ukrainians Russians.
It is known that many Chechen soldiers participated in the assault on Mariupol, there were Russian special forces, aviation and artillery were working on a large scale. And according to the film, it seems that this is a village where a couple of Russian assault troops and a bunch of Ukrainians are fighting, who are quickly moving to Azovstal – Dima, by the way, they will get there, but we can't talk further, so as not to have spoilers. It is clear that the budget is small, but there is no feeling of a big and grueling battle for the city, after which only ruins remained of it, this is a minus for cinema.
A shot from the movie "The Kid"
But this movie also has a serious advantage. Here, vivid images are given on both sides, Polina Agureeva and Oleg Vasilkov have them even more voluminous than those of Kalyuzhny and the soldiers of the detachment into which his hero got. But all this is so mixed up, all the identification patches look so conventional, the methods and speeches coincide so much that, on the one hand, you don't sympathize with anyone here, "I don't feel sorry for anyone, neither you, nor me, nor him," as it was sung in the second "Boomer."
On the other hand, it may be a sign of the emotional state that Simonov recorded when he wandered through the streets of Mariupol and communicated with people. Fatigue, exhaustion, and the inability to feel, even if it's about hate, remain as an aftertaste for the viewer. And when Kalyuzhny picks up the guitar at the end, it will be sharply dissonant with the traditional musical ending of most paintings. Usually the song at the end is a catharsis, a coda, a revelation, but here it's just a farewell exhale, after which it remains only to silently roll the credits.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
