A fascinating look at the underworld of St. Petersburg, filled with excellent performances, especially by Sergei Bodrov III and Yuri Kutznetsov. I was swept away by the story and characters, thrown into their world. And there is no place else like St. Petersburg. I'd say it's a "must see."

I got fooled by the extremely high rating this movie got on here. Well fooled is a big word because Brat (or Brother for the English title) isn't a bad movie but it's also not a gem. To me it's just overrated. Maybe if I was Russian I would think differently, but I'm not, I'm Belgian. The story isn't bad, but it's not incredible either. It's just entertaining enough to never get bored. The acting skills from Sergey Bodrov playing the main character are certainly not bad, it's one of the positive things about Brat. Would I watch it again in the future? Probably not as there are way too much better movies that I didn't watch yet, but for a Russian movie it's rather good.

This Russian film about a young hitman in St. Petersburg could just as easily have been set in London or New York; killing for profit's the same everywhere, isn't it, and yet Aleksey Balabanov's terrific thriller "Brother" seems peculiarly Russian. You wouldn't really find these characters in London or New York and what happens here wouldn't necessarily happen there, at least not in this fashion.

Danila, (Sergey Bodrov, excellent) is a young ex-soldier who gets into trouble at home so his mother packs him off to live with his older, well-off brother in St. Petersburg. The thing is, however, big brother is a hitman and very soon Danila is, too. The thrills Balabanov serves up aren't the ones you expect. This is a character study like Melville's "Le Samourai" but our young anti-hero is a rank amateur compared with Delon, although he does know his way around a gun. Danilo thinks he's a big shot but he's just another young boy with a passion for rock music, (the film has a terrific score). Even the ending isn't the conventional one. See this.