A high-energy action comedy that blasts along like a live-action Roadrunner cartoon, No Looking Back is the second feature from promising young Russian writer-director Kyrill Sokolov. Essentially an extended cat-and-mouse chase involving three generations of women from the same dysfunctional family, this elevated genre exercise makes its international debut this week in the main competition strand of Black Nights Film Festval in Tallinn. Sokololov’s darkly comic splatterpunk debut Why Don’t You Just Die! (2018) previously made a big splash at the same festival, picking up rave reviews and international distribution deals.
Paying self-conscious homage to the superior pulp movie pantheon, from Sergio Leone to Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino to Park Chan-wook, No Looking Back displays the same fondness for bone-crunching, tooth-loosening, eye-gouging violence as Sokolov’s debut. Every punch is a knockout wallop, every altercation a bruising bloodbath. This time around, however, nihilistic comic-book carnage is leavened with a dash of sentimental sweetness. Tonally, this delicate balancing act does not always work, but the overall effect is riotously energetic, cheerfully crude and sporadically hilarious.
Hot-headed Olga (Victoria Korotkova) has just been released from a four-year stretch in a brutal prison for violently assaulting her drunken, abusive, crooked cop ex Oleg (Alexander Yatsenko). She intends to visit her mother Vera (Anna Mikhalkova) in her sleepy village home, reclaim custody of her 10-year-old daughter Masha (Sofia Krugova), then move to the city with a new boyfriend who she barely knows. But Vera has other plans: to keep hold of the smart, sassy Masha and save her from making the same dumb life choices as her lowlife mother.
When this generational stand-off escalates into conflict, Olga snatches Masha and goes on the run through a nearby forest. Vera then bribes and bullies Oleg to help her track down Masha at all costs, even if it means killing her mother in the process. Thus No Looking Back becomes a kind of deranged rollercoaster ride of frantic escapes, divided loyalties and frenzied confrontations, all climaxing in a western-style shoot-out on a lonely highway. Meanwhile, a subplot involving the chief warder at Olga’s former penitentiary (Olga Lapshina) echoes this theme of parents struggling to save their children from making the same life-changing mistakes that they themselves made.
Once again, Sokolov proves his rare flair for the kinetic, adrenalised grammar of action cinema. Reuniting with Why Don’t You Just Die! cinematographer Dmitry Ulyukaev, he amps up energy levels with a similar mix of restlessly mobile camera moves, saturated colours, jump cuts and frenetic flashback loops that worked so well on their previous collaboration. Music is also crucial to the dramatic fabric: a jaunty orchestral waltz adds levity to action scenes, punctuated with bursts of heavy rock guitar and shiny Europop.
But Sokolov’s broad-brush comic approach sometimes works against him. His relentlessly flippant attitude to violence, including domestic abuse, risks tipping over from ironic bad taste to shallow sensationalism. Because crime and punishment means little to these cheerfully amoral characters, and even major injury seems to do no them lasting damage, not much feels at stake dramatically. Sustaining suspense levels in this consequence-free Looney Tunes universe is an uphill struggle.
Some of the performances also shade into over-the-top clowning, lacking the edge of menace that a desperate chase plot requires. The prim Korotkova certainly looks a little too much like a young Olivia Colman to pass muster as a lethally dangerous bad-ass. That said, Krugova makes a great big-screen debut as Masha, a two-fisted tomboy who balances naïve wisdom with four-letter outbursts and scatological jokes. Highly enjoyable as a live-action cartoon, No Looking Back does not quite have the same bracingly original punch as Why Don’t You Just Die!, but it confirms Sokolov as a serious talent within a gleefully non-serious movie genre.
Director, screenwriter: Kirill Sokolov
Cast: Victoria Korotkova, Sofia Krugova, Anna Mikhalkova, Alexander Yatsenko, Olga Lapshina
Producers: Artem Vasilyev, Igor Mishin
Cinematography: Dmitry Ulyukaev
Editor: Kirill Sokolov
Music: Max Rudenko
Production company: Metrafilms
World sales: M-Appeal
Venue: Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn (main competition)
In Russian
98 minutes
