Brother

Though it's tempting to pigeonhole Alexei Balabanov's film as a crime melodrama, its noirish style and emotional tenderness impart some art to the pulp. Bodrov's Danila returns from the Russian army an aimless and brooding young man. And who could help but brood in a St. Petersburg rotten with American consumerism and Russian gangsterism — and, as photographed, drowning in a sickly yellow light? Taken under the brutish wing of his brother, a Mob hitman, Danila blazes a lethal trail to the bottom of the Russian underworld; we follow, jittery and tense. B+