Aleksei Balabanov's "Brother 2" (2000)

Directed by Aleksei Balabanov, Brother 2 is a sequel of the 1997 cult gangster drama Brother, released in 2000. Unlike the first film, which was made on a shoestring budget, surprising its creators by its blockbuster success, Brother 2 was a full-fledged production, which included filming on location in Moscow, New York, and Chicago. The sequel picks up several years after the conclusion of the first film, with Danila living in Moscow, and appearing on state television with his cohort of fellow Chechen war veterans, who fought side-by-side and helped save each other’s lives. Soon after, Danila learns that Kostia, one of his frontline buddies, is mistakenly murdered, because he dared to confront his boss about the unfair treatment of his twin brother, who plays for the NHL in Chicago. In his steadfast and loyal fashion, Danila vows to honor his fallen comrades last wish, and having recruited his brother Viktor as his hired killer, he travels to America to save Kostia’s brother from the Chicago-based Ukrainian mafia and their American businessman boss. Ethnic and racial conflict plays an outsized role in Balabanov’s portrayal of the mythical America, which Danila’s musical idol Viacheslav Butusov has bid farewell in his Perestroika-era ballad “The Last Letter” (#00144), that serves as a both a musical and thematic leitmotif in the film. The Unites States is presented as a largely inhospitable place for the newfound post-Soviet Russian identity, something that Bagrov symbolizes and Bodrov Jr. embodies. In his travels, Danila meets a Russian prostitute named Dasha, who he is set on rescuing and bringing back to Russia, where he believes she ultimately belongs. Dasha’s story of immigration is rife with heartbreak, betrayal, and violence, something that Balabanov paints as an inevitable struggle. And it is a cultural conflict that like in Chechnya, Danila is set to solve through military-style means. In presenting post-Soviet immigrant life in the United States as warfare and placing Danila in the position of its ultimate victor, Balabanov’s sequel is a more fully articulated provocation to the idea that the Western-style cultural model is Russia’s only viable alternative to communist rule. Danila, whose xenophobic pronouncements are more severe and overt in the sequel, have made it into the post-Soviet Russian vernacular, reflecting Balabanov’s uncanny ability cinematically to diagnose his country’s deeply held attitudes.

Despite the overt nationalistic tonality of the film, Brother 2 became a hit in Russia and gained acclaim in the West, in large part due to the film’s soundtrack, featuring a variety of post-Soviet rock bands. In the twenty-first century, Danila’s lines from the sequel, “Strength is in truth” and “At war, Russians do not abandon their own” (Sila v pravde”; “Russkie na voine svoikh ne brosaiut”), have been methodically weaponized as wartime slogans by Russian state propaganda to rationalize the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and bolster its public support. Roughly a week after the invasion, it was announced that Brother 2 wоuld be widely screened in theatres across the Russian Federation in the wake of Hollywood’s exit from the Russian film market. The premiere of Brother 2’s re-screening took place on March 24, 2022.