Granit — that’s his codename — is a righteous butt kicker. He’s in Mozambique, helping train the country’s military to fight obscure ISIS-backed bandits, but he’s not there to fight heroically alongside them. His boss even says, “I warn you—no fights or heroes.” But Granit can’t help himself. He and his fellow mercenaries form the Mozambican army and shoot along with the bandits. He also finds time to seek out local children who will inevitably learn the language. Spasiboor “thank you”.
As a movie, ‘Granite’ is bad in a predictable way, echoing a not-so-silly Steven Seagal flick. Lead actor Oleg Chernov has a natural world weariness, feline grace, and a nice, big head that Josh Brolin would appreciate. Occasionally he makes insane dialogue work. (“In war, it’s not the gun that decides, it’s the ball,” he says at one point. “Whoever has the stronger ball wins.”) But what “Granit” sings is, A hint of explicit politicization. “For Russians, ideas are more important than money,” says one villain. “Give a Russian an idea and he’ll work for free.” When someone suggests that Russian fighters are losing depth in Mozambique, this same villain is now clearly fascinated by Russians. and counter that the Maputo street they are talking about is called Av. Vladimir Lenin. Perhaps “Granite” does not carry the torch of Marxism-Leninism. This street is meant to represent Russia’s power and historical importance in general.
The film’s message is so scattered that you may see signs all over the place. At one point, Granite and his crew smashed a glass Coca-Cola bottle to create a makeshift booby trap. A clever knock of American imperialism, or a nod to “Home Alone”? died in Mozambique on “It was overgrown with undergrowth, and all the high-tech equipment that Wagner had brought was ineffective.” A Mozambican intelligence expert told the Moscow Times. “The Russians have arrived with drones, but they can’t really use them.”
Action movies as a format have always been great at presenting a worldview. As an explicit means of recruitment, the closest American analogue to Wagner films may be Frank Capra’s World War II series Why We Fight. But their inspiration undoubtedly comes from his 1980s Cold War, when America was producing nationalistic productions like “Red Dawn,” “Invasion USA,” and “Rambo III.” More recent American propaganda is known for its neutralized abstraction — this year’s Top Gun: Maverick deliberately obscures the identity of its foreign enemies. , pans drooling over expensive hardware provided by the Department of Defense.The movie is fighting space robots. Movies about Americans saving the planet from evil may be part of the political reality that the Pentagon’s budget is unlikely to be cut, but the purpose of these movies is to make money in the first place. is.
It’s easy for Americans to forget just how much ideology is packed into the genre. Until you watch movies from other places and face cartoon heroes and villains from other cultures. The name “Wagner” was never actually used in Wagner’s films, and Prigogine only recently admitted that he was the founder of the group. But in September, a video emerged of a man believed to be Prigogine standing in the garden of a Russian penal colony and recruiting Wagner by offering a reduced sentence in exchange for serving his sentence. floating in “Is there anyone who can get you out of prison alive?” he asks. “There are two, Allah and God. I will get you out of here alive. But I don’t always bring you back.” “The first prisoner I fought with was at the Vkhrehirsk power plant, there were 40 of them,” he said, referring to actual fighting in Ukraine. “Of the three dead, one was 52. He served his 30 years in prison. He died a hero.”