I don't even know how this ended up in my queue. It's been there forever, though. Worse, it was not worth the wait. Lola (Ekaterina Guseva) is having a birthday but not a happy one. Two men calling themselves Bim (Vladimir Simonov) and Bom (Sergey Askatov) have barged into her apartment and are holding her hostage. They are professional assassins, and Lola's apartment happens to be the one with the best vantage of their target.
I think that I thought this was supposed to be a comedy. It is not. Or maybe it is in Russia, which makes me wonder about Russians as a people. I found nothing funny in this. There's no slapstick, no gags, just bizarre banter between the two killers and Lola frantically trying to signal for help from someone, anyone. There's a lot of homophobia and just toxic masculinity in general. I was not on board with that. The movie wants you to think one of the hitmen is the "nice" one because he doesn't rape Lola the first chance he gets, thought it's clear that he expects to have sex with her at some point if she wants to make it out alive.
I will be the first to say I am not up to speed on Russian films. I think I've only seen one legit in Russian, and a few English films made by a Russian director (who is technically from Kazakhstan but was born while it was part of the USSR). If they are all like this, though, I'm okay with my lack of familiarity.
Yeah...I actually work with a Russian dude, and dated a few Russian women (they lived in Gainesville and went to UF there). It's a different culture, for sure. Anime films and series actually get a lot of play there, and always have, but their homegrown film industry was just becoming a thing in 2001, so this is no surprise. I mean, East German cinema wasn't culturally recognizable for a long time either. I've seen this (found it while looking for Run, Lola, Run and Birthday Girl one day), and yeah, I didn't care for it either.
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