Issue 77 (2022) |
Petr Buslov: BOOMERang (BUMERang, 2021) reviewed by Frederick H. White © 2022 |
The artist Andrei Petrovich Malikov (Tribuntsev), now a dissolute alcoholic, leaves his last worldly possessions (mainly woodcarvings) and an audio cassette for his daughter in his workshop garage. Having made the decision to end his life, Malikov climbs to the roof of a high-rise, takes a final sip for courage, and then jumps off. Miraculously, his life is saved when he crashes through the convertible rooftop of a BMW parked below. The brand-new BMW, a gift for his wife, belongs to Edik (Nagiev), who has just stopped briefly to see his mistress. Edik cannot believe his misfortune as a video blogger interrogates him about the incident, as his mistress stands nearby. So begins Petr Buslov’s BOOMERang, the latest in a series of bandit films that use the attainment of a BMW as a metaphor for the main character’s ultimate demise.
In this latest instalment, Buslov unites various stories into a single narrative organized around the twist of fate. Like with the other Boomer (the Russian slang word for BMW) films, the underlying theme is that you cannot buy or steal happiness. A car, even a BMW, will not enrich your life. Friends and family are what should be valued. As the relationship of Edik and Malikov aims for redemption albeit with conflict between their idealist and materialist qualities, the Pastor (Madianov) hires a contract killer (Khabarov) to eliminate Edik, his business partner. More than once the killer is frustrated by random acts of chance. Finally, the dwarf boxer (Bobtsov) is looking for a lucrative fight that will take him beyond his current underground boxing matches. Ultimately, he too ends up in the BMW. Each character is brought low by his greed for material wealth.
BOOMERang seems to position itself within the bandit genre, specific to Russian cinema. The success of Aleksei Balabanov’s Brother (Brat, 1997) and Brother 2 (Brat 2, 2000) encouraged similar films of the bandit type: Sergei Bodrov Jr.’s Sisters (Sestry, 2001), Buslov’s Boomer (Bumer, 2003) and Boomer 2 (Bumer – Fil’m vtoroi, 2006). Marking the end of this film cycle, Balabanov’s Dead Man’s Bluff (Zhmurki, 2005), described as both a black comedy and a crime film, was a pastiche of the lawless 1990s, reflecting a very different political and social reality—Vladimir Putin’s law and order society (White 2016). Buslov’s BOOMERang is a similar type of criminal comedy, referencing the bandits of the past, while employing black humor. Unfortunately, there are few actual comedic moments in this film, and the parodic elements are not clearly delineated.
Buslov’s first bandit film, Boomer, represented a significant shift in the popular perception of the bandit as hero. A group of friends are undone by the theft of a BMW 750IL, eventually shot and arrested in a final confrontation with police in a provincial town. The recurring motif of the film is the ring-tone of Buslov’s main character Kostian (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), representing the fateful phone-call from his friend about their final criminal job. Kostian tells himself that this will be their last job before he starts life anew with his wife and child in their remodeled apartment. Buslov’s film is a poignant reflection of Putin’s emerging post-Soviet society in which low-level criminal business no longer is a viable option.
Nearing the 20th anniversary of Boomer, Buslov wanted to return to the bandit genre. For an attentive audience, he offers a few references to his earlier films. Svetlana Ustinova appeared in Boomer 2 as Dasha and now plays the ex-stripper who manages the dwarf boxer. Maksim Konovalov played Lekha “Killa” in Boomer and now appears as the mechanic who buys Malikov’s motorcycle for pennies on the dollar. Inside the mechanic’s garage is the original film poster of Boomer. Early in the film, the visual reference to the film poster seems to promise more than what Buslov is ultimately able to deliver.
Dan Harries has argued that film parody relies on and cannibalizes earlier filmic texts. This reworking disrupts not only the viewing of previous textual systems (i.e. Brother, Brother 2, Boomer, Boomer 2, etc.), but also the viewing of future filmic texts related to the benchmark films of the film cycle. Harries has proposed that film parody is inherently concerned with the historical tradition that it is ridiculing by recalling the codes and conventions of past films. In fact, once a film genre has reached predictability, parody emerges in commercial cinema to extend the genre’s popularity (Harries 2000, 121). In this case, however, Buslov is late in offering a parody, some sixteen years after Balabanov, who unapologetically released Dead Man’s Bluff with the tag-line: “For those who lived through the 1990s.” The assertion was that anyone who had endured the previous decade’s banditry could now look back on the period with some nostalgia and even laugh.
More to the point, even as BOOMERang acknowledges its Russian antecedents, its implicit references are to western filmmakers. For example, the evangelical Pastor, who also owns a slaughterhouse, is clearly fleecing his religious followers, while slaughtering actual sheep. This character might be more plausibly found in one of Guy Ritchie’s British gangster films. Also, there is a scene in which Edik offers to buy one of Malikov’s woodcarvings. Malikov refuses to sell because the piece is “part of his soul.” Edik continues to raise the price of the offer and even threatens to have Malikov shot, but the artist refuses to sell his soul. The dialogue and situation are imitative of early Quentin Tarantino. As a result, the parodic intent is unclear—Russian and/or western criminal films? Regrettably, BOOMERang is not a successful pastiche of the Russia bandit film or a productive addition to the Boomer series of films.
Frederick H. White
Utah Valley University
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Works Cited
Harries, Dan. 2000. Film Parody. London: British Film Institute.
White, Frederick H. 2016. “Balabanov’s Bandits: The Bandit Film Cycle in Post-Soviet Cinema,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 25 (2): 82-103.
BOOMERang, RF, 2021
Color, 101 minutes
Director: Petr Buslov
Screenplay: Vladimir Tsarenko, Petr Buslov
DoP: Sergei Kozlov
Composer: Sviatoslav Kurashov
Cast: Dmitrii Nagiev, Timofei Tribuntsev, Vladimir Sychev, Elena Sever, Roman Madianov, Svetlana Ustinova, Maksim Vitorgan, Andrei Khabarov, Valeriia Astapova, Artem Bobtsov, Anton Lapenko, Semen Slepakov, Roman Popov, Anna Ukolova, Galina Pol’skikh, Denis Lebedev, Maksim Konovalov, Konstantin Murzenko, Petr Buslov, Klim Shipenko, Pavel Vorozhtsev, Boris Zverev, and Iulia Shifershtein.
Producer: Tania Statsman, Elena Sever, Petr Buslov, Sergei Oganesian
Petr Buslov: BOOMERang (BUMERang, 2021) reviewed by Frederick H. White © 2022 |