"Cargo 200" starts with Artem(Leonid Gromov), a professor of scientific atheism, drinking with his brother Mikhail(Yuri Stepanov), an army colonel, on a balcony in Leningrad in 1984. Artem leaves to visit their mother in Leninsk but his car breaks down along the way. Seeing a light in the distance, he goes to a cabin
to ask for help and Sunka(Mikhail Skryabin), a Vietnamese national, fixes his car. A short time later, Valera(Leonid Bichevin) convinces Angelika(Agniya Kuznetsova) to go with him someplace secluded and nearby but they end up at the very same cabin where Valera manages to pass out drunk...Based on a true story, "Cargo 200" is a nasty, dark and brooding tale set at a time when the Soviet Union was collapsing under its own weight as dead bodies were being returned in coffins from Afghanistan at an ever increasing rate as live bodies were going in the opposite direction, the powers that be trying to cover their tracks as best they could. And on a local level, authority was either alternately being abused or simply ignored. While all of this was going on, the older generation simply scoffed at the younger generation who they expected to fight their battles but instead just ignored the old orthodoxy.
January 4, 2009
Top Critic
