Marvel have finally released the Black Widow movie, but it’s well worth remembering Russia has its own comic book and film industries, and perhaps coincidentally, this week saw the US release of Major Grom: Plague Doctor — reportedly the first feature film based on a Russian comic — on Netflix. Directed by Oleg Trofim, the film, based on the Bubble Comics series of the same name, follows Igor Grom (Tikhon Zhiznevsky), a Saint Petersburg Police detective, as he battles a murderous vigilante resembling a plague era physician. Saint Petersburg is ruled by the oligarchy, and the Plague Doctor has vowed to burn them down — literally.
As well as Grom, the film also tells the story of “Dima” Dubin (Aleksandr Seteykin), a rookie who is assigned as Grom’s partner; Yulia Pchelkina (Lyubov Aksyonova), a citizen journalist whose quest to unmask the Plague Doctor causes her to butt heads with Grom; Sergei Razumovsky (Sergei Goroshko), a tech bro inadvertently responsible for the fiend’s existence; and “Lyosha” Makarov (Oleg Chugunov), a boy whose sister was run over and killed by a rich douchebag, leading him to idolize the Doctor.
Grom has no superpowers, save for his ability to keep his flat cap on all times, and a talent for vividly imagining how scenarios could play out (similar to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes), which offers several fun rug pulls. The film opens with Grom stopping a group of bank robbers, which, after several failed mental video game playthroughs, leads him to commandeer a garbage truck and ram their vehicle into the square outside the Winter Palace. It’s a fun, imaginative, and very Ritchie-esque sequence set to Russian punk music, and unfortunately the film goes downhill from there.
Grom’s powers of imagination are used sparingly in the rest of the film (during one fight scene, he even mutters he hasn’t got time to think), which, as a whole, can be described as having good moments, but not enough to make it worth checking out if you’re not a comics historian, or a global cinephile. The cinematography is gritty and atmospheric, with location filming in some of Saint Petersburg’s most deprived areas, but it remains strangely glossy: you’ll never feel like you can smell the wet pavements, or the stench of the gutters. And despite its 137 minute runtime, it feels emotionally shallow because of the number of protagonists, whose storylines are compartmentalized and undeveloped as a result: Grom and Lyosha have only one scene in the film, with the boy largely there as a lead to deduce the Doctor’s identity, and it takes a while for him to partner up with Dima.
We never get any insight into Grom, Dima, or Yulia’s backstories, and while it is refreshing that this isn’t an origin story for the hero, the absence of anything deeper for the other two characters means lead actor Zhiznevsky is left hanging, only able to scowl his way through the movie. Aleksandr Seteykin gives a really sweet performance as Dima, but there’s only so much he can do before you start forgetting his character exists whenever he’s offscreen. The Plague Doctor does receive an extensive backstory, thoroughly justifying them sharing top billing, but unfortunately it’s quite similar to the twists in a couple of classic films (saying which ones would be a spoiler, so we’ll discuss them later, where marked.)
Tonally, there’s a bleak, presumably Russian sensibility to the jokes that will prove offputting for a lot of non-Russian viewers eg. a perp at the police station points out you can’t be arrested for domestic violence in Russia, only to be reminded he attacked his neighbor. (Told you it was a sidesplitter.) In fairness, this movie is rated 12+ in Russia, and this gallows humor could be how it educates its target audience about corruption in their country, but it’s jarring how it can have the hero citing Dostoevsky one minute, and then bring back a gag character (an old man who’s a walking commentary on the crappy state of pensions in the country) in the next.
The intensity is also tame for a film about a villain who immolates his victims: I knew this was rated TV-14, but The Dark Knight was a PG-13, and consequently, the realism and social commentary comes across as a little disingenuous. Oh yes, make no mistake about it, Major Grom is a political film that’s well aware of who the President of Russia is, and the Plague Doctor is a charismatic figure who inspires the city’s downtrodden to rise up against the rich and corrupt. The film has its cake and eats it with that: Grom is a violent jerk who doesn’t play by the rules (you can tell because he’s the only one who doesn’t wear a uniform at the office), but he doesn’t kill either, while the Plague Doctor has a point, but they’re an evil maniac who kills children. It might’ve felt less apathetic if we’d seen Grom take a cue from Dima’s friendly approach to criminals though.
Continued belowThe Plague Doctor pulls an intriguingly diabolical fast one on Grom in the third act (one that I’m surprised hasn’t been used in an American superhero film), but all in all, this movie feels like a mash-up between Nolan’s Batman films and V for Vendetta for 12-year old Russian boys and their dads. Ultimately, I didn’t give Major Grom a thumbs up or down: if you’re looking for a deconstructionist, European take on superheroes with a villain resembling a plague doctor, I recommend trying out last year’s Spanish Netflix acquisition Unknown Origins first — at the very least, that film was much more tonally consistent.
Post-credits scenes: There is a mid-credits scene, and a post-credits one, both setting up a potential sequel.
Spoilers: So the Plague Doctor’s identity comes across as a mash-up of the twists from Fight Club and The Sixth Sense, as it’s revealed he’s Razumovsky, who is depicted as suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and hallucinating the vigilante is his deceased childhood friend and assistant Oleg (Dmitry Chebotaryov). (Oleg turns out to be alive in the post-credits scene, but that’s beside the point.) The twist feels clever for a split second as you realize Oleg didn’t interact with anyone else, but their initial dynamic was much more interesting, especially with its LGBT+ undertones: though, despite that (and the character making a homophobic jibe about Grom and Dima), Razumovsky still comes across as queer coded.
Speaking of gay undertones, Grom has a conversation with Dima in his apartment, that he’s completely shirtless for the duration of — I imagine shippers will enjoy that.
