It’s hard to imagine a character better named than the titular protagonist of Oleh Sentsov’s Rhino (Nosorih), the story of thick-skinned, die-hard Ukrainian gangsters from the post-Soviet Nineties who trample everything in sight when they charge. And they’re always ready for a rumble, whether it’s with regular citizens or other gang members. The thing is, they don’t really know why they’re so bad or what they’re after – and the film offers precious few clues. They carry guns, knives and steel bats but prefer the satisfying impact of fists on breaking bone, and the well-shot fight scenes, which follow each other almost non-stop, are full of a frenzied macho excitement. Many viewers of this Venice Horizons title will wonder what the point is.
Sentsov has called the film his reflection on the early 1990s, when Ukraine was overrun by vicious criminal bands who took control of the country. It’s as though, suddenly freed of the iron hand of Soviet law, these bad apples found themselves rudderless and without any sort of moral backbone to keep their worst impulses in check. By implication, the forces of law and order must have been impotent, inefficient or too corrupt to stop them.
Yet the film is missing this wider political angle of vision, keeping too close to one particularly cruel and violent youth, who runs berserk with his cohorts until he repents in a mystical, eleventh-hour change of heart. Even ignoring his unconvincing repentance, which he makes to an all-knowing man in black (Yevhen Chernykov) who could be a demon or an angel or Death or his conscience, one struggles to get a psychological fix on the anti-hero, played by newcomer Serhii Filimonov with astoundingly realistic brute force but little in the way of expression that would allow the viewer into his inner world.
The director’s own life has been marked by his activism against Putin’s Russia and against the annexation of his native Crimea to Russia, which led to his being found guilty of “plotting terrorist acts” and sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Russian court. The concerted efforts of the European Film Academy, Amnesty International and the European Parliament led to his release after five years, in a larger prisoner swap. Thus Rhino, which was written in 2011, could only be shot last year.
Not that the story is dated. In a dizzying tour-de-force opening, twenty years of the protagonist’s childhood and early youth fly by in a single long-take shot, orchestrated within the confines of a small frame house where the boy lives with his mom, abusive dad (arrested when he tries to take an axe to the mother), pretty sister and an older brother who goes off to fight in Afghanistan. Despite appearances, it seems like a fairly close-knit and affectionate family to create a monster like the protag. Even as a small boy, Rhino is high-spirited, scrappy and destructive, so the conclusion to be drawn is that his violent streak is in-born.
D.P. Bogumil Godfrejow, who doubled as camera operator, changes register and goes for darker hues when Rhino emerges as a short-haired bruiser swaggering down the street with his girlfriend Marina (Alina Zevakova), a disco queen who exerts a positive influence on his drinking and brawling, or tries to. He is already in the bad books of the police, but Sentsov amps up the volume in an incredible scene in a gym. When Rhino is told the gym is closed, he starts a fight with the owner Skull and his boys that would send anybody else to an early grave. Instead he walks off and goes to see a rival gang leader, with whom he signs up. There he meets the smiling Plus (stage actor Yevhen Grygoriev) and the two work together in a lethal protection racket that includes burning debtors alive. Meanwhile he marries Marina, but his taste for orgies (lavishly filmed) and beautiful girls leads to domestic tragedy.
Plus becomes his right hand man when Rhino, in turn, rises to lead the pack. The warfare between the two gangs includes a machine gun ambush straight out of The Untouchables and climaxes, many scenes later, in Rhino being caught and tortured. It’s a bit like trying to kill King Kong, however: simple bullets and broken bones never seem to be enough.
Despite the terrible things he does, Filimonov’s Rhino has a certain perverted dignity as a fighter and survivor, and earns admiration for his sheer ability to second guess his enemies and stay alive. His so-called repentance and poetic ruminations on the soul it’s best to forget.
Director, screenplay: Oleh Sentsov
Cast: Serhii Filimonov, Yevhen Chernykov, Yevhen Grygoriev, Alina Zevakova, Okeksandr Rudynskyi
Producers: Dennis Ivanov, Oleh Sentsov, Dariusz Jablonski, Violetta Kaminska, Izabela Wojcik, Heino Deckert, Tina Boerner
Cinematography: Bogumil Godfrejow
Production design: Yuriy Grigorovich
Costume design: Kostiantyn Kravets
Editing: Karolina Maciejewska
Music: Andriy Ponomariov
Sound: Patrick Veigel, Michael Kaczmarek
Production companies: Arthouse Traffic (Ukraine), Cry Cinema (Ukraine), Apple Film Productions (Poland), Ma.ja.de Fiction (Germany)
World sales: WestEnd Films
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
In Ukrainian, Russian
101 minutes
