Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD Release: The Major & The Fool

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April. 19, 2016
Price: DVD $24.95 each, Blu-ray $29.95 each
Studio: Olive Films


The drama The Fool (2014) and the crime drama The Major (2013) are a pair of noteworthy recent films from rising Russian filmmaker Yury Bykov.

Denis Shvedov is The Major

Denis Shvedov is The Major

Credited (along with Leviathan) as one of the films that made the Russian Ministry of Culture threaten to pull funding from Russian “miserablist” films, The Fool paints a bleak picture indeed. The film masterfully constructs a city’s crumbling apartment building and its morally bankrupt government as a microcosm for Russia. Dima (Artyom Bystrov) is a young man eking out a living in modern day Russia as a plumber’s assistant while working to finish college. Called out late one night to inspect a leak at a derelict housing community, he discovers a major structural problem and a building on the verge of collapse. In his attempt to save the lives of the eight hundred residents, Dima will find himself drawn into a world of dark secrets and cancerous corruption involving his country’s leading politicians and power players…

Bykov’s The Major tackles similar themes of a corrupt Russia in an equally effective manner. Set against Russia’s bleak, bitter winter landscape, Sergey Sobolev (Denis Shvedov) a police major driving recklessly across an icy stretch of highway, hits and kills a young boy. The boy’s mother Irina (Irina Nizina) finds her already unbearable pain and anguish compounded when a cover-up is set in motion to protect Sergey. Events soon spin out of control with double-crosses, betrayals and duplicity at every turn.

Both films are unrated and each is presented in Russian with English subtitles

 

Buy or Rent The Major
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Buy or Rent The Fool
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.