Dead Man's Bluff

Dead Man's Bluff is set in Nizhny Novgorod in the mid-1990s, where a local crime boss known as Mikhalych controls the city's drug trade. Two young, quick-tempered enforcers, Sergei and Simon, work for him. When they are sent to deal with a visiting chemist and then lose a suitcase full of heroin that was meant for their boss, they find themselves in serious danger. They must get the drugs back before Mikhalych learns what happened, and their only real skill is violence, usually a bullet to the head.

Aleksey Balabanov directed and co-wrote the film with Stas Mokhnachev; Sergei Selyanov produced it for CTB Film Company. It came after Balabanov's Brother and Brother 2, continuing his run of crime stories from the same period of Russian cinema. Aleksey Panin and Dmitriy Dyuzhev play the two leads, while Nikita Mikhalkov, at that point known mainly as a director, appears in the role of Mikhalych. Sergey Makovetskiy, Anatoli Zhuravlyov and Grigorij Sijatvinda are among the 29 credited cast members. Though violent, the film plays its material as comedy, mixing crime and thriller elements.

Released in May 2005, the film took about 4 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly 10,000 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6.7 from around 173 votes, so viewers there are fewer and somewhat less enthusiastic, though both figures point to a generally positive response.