A highly efficient and effective epic in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century. This film focuses on a handsome and intense hero, a close professional at a time when the nobles resolved disputes and disputes by taking swords or pistols with a specific system. There was a strict code of conduct applied to the practice of fencing. So the old warrior was able to beat his opponent brilliantly.
A tiresome but meticulously detailed and visually sumptuous Russian melodrama about romance and intrigue amid the nobility in 19th century St. Petersburg.
The look of the movie is still the most appealing thing about it. Whether you watch a film on a giant screen or an iPhone, the format doesn't untangle messy plot threads.
Mizgirev's script is an indigestible, soap-operatic mess of backstories, clichés, and the kind of ambiguous mystic overtones that have become an unbreakable addiction for Russian film.
Writer-director Mizgirev has a sharpshooter's cold pair of eyes. His lens adds an antiseptic quality to the many deaths... It's Fyodorov's performance that communicates the emotional burden of killing.