Brother

Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov Jr.), recently discharged after serving in the First Chechen War, returns to his hometown. His mother insists that he travel to Saint Petersburg to seek out his successful older brother Viktor (Viktor Sukhorukov), who his mother is confident will help him make a living. Arriving in Saint Petersburg, Danila wanders around the city and befriends Kat (Maria Zhukova), an energetic party girl, and an elderly Russian German named Hoffman (Yury Kuznetsov), a homeless street vendor whom Danila rescues from a thug attempting to extort him. Unbeknown to their mother, Viktor is an accomplished hitman who goes by the nickname "Tatar", working for a St. Petersburg mafia boss called "Krugly" (Russian for "round"). His latest target is "the Chechen", a Chechen mafia boss who had seized a local market. Krugly (Sergei Murzin), who is unhappy with the amount of money that Viktor has demanded for the hit, orders his thugs to watch the Chechen, so that they can kill Viktor after the hit and thereby avoid paying him. Danila eventually meets up with Viktor. To avoid exposure, Viktor passes his assignment to his brother, gives him money to settle in the city, and then lies to him that the Chechen has been extorting from him, asking Danila to perform the hit. Danila agrees. Through Hoffman's friends, Danila rents a room in the apartment of an elderly alcoholic war veteran. Arriving in the market in a disguise, Danila detonates several homemade explosives as a distraction, and, taking advantage of the confusion, kills the Chechen, but Krugly's men pursue Danila and manage to wound him. Danila barely escapes the pursuit, jumping onto a freight tram, and in a shootout kills one of the bandits. Tram driver Sveta (Svetlana Pismichenko) offers to help the wounded Danila, but he refuses, promising to find her later and thank her. After Danila recovers with Hoffman's help, he sets off to look for Sveta. A relationship develops between them, despite Sveta having a husband who is rarely home and who constantly beats her. Meanwhile, Krugly finds the tram on which Danila escaped and asks Sveta about it, who puts Krugly on a false trail. Krugly promises to punish her if she deceived them. Danila goes to visit Sveta, having bought her a radio with a CD player as a gift. Left alone in the room, he runs into her husband, who unexpectedly arrives. Danila takes the keys to the room from him and forbids him to show up in the future. After going to a party with Kat and having sex with her, Danila wakes up in his apartment to a phone call from Viktor. Pretending to be ill, Viktor asks him to take part in another job in his place, and Danila agrees again. Meanwhile, Krugliy decides to draw the Tatar into a combined raid. Danila meets the two bandits and together they go to an apartment where the target is supposed to appear. Taking the owner of the apartment hostage, they wait for the target, who has gone to get some vodka. At the same time, a group of local musicians is celebrating a birthday one floor above, and one of the guests, sound engineer Stepan, mistakes the floor and ends up in the apartment where Danila and the bandits are. Stepan turns out to be an unwanted witness, and the bandits take him hostage. Danila promises him that he will not be harmed. Some time later, Vyacheslav Butusov (cameo) also calls the apartment by mistake. Danila follows Butusov up to the apartment on the floor above and listens to the music. Returning to the apartment and seeing that the bandits have killed the owner and are about to deal with Stepan, Danila says that he will do it himself, takes a gun from one of the bandits, but unexpectedly shoots the two bandits. With Stepan's help, he hides the bodies in the cemetery and asks Hoffman to bury them. Krugly and his men begin hunting for Danila. They come to Sveta, beat and rape her, but they fail to learn anything about Danila. A bandit nicknamed Krot sets up an ambush for Danila, but Danila manages to survive and kill Krot. Coming to Sveta and seeing her beaten, Danila learns that this is Krugly's work. Krugly takes Viktor hostage and, threatening to kill him, demands that he hand over Danila and return the money. At this point, Danila calls his brother and is suspicious after hearing his frightened voice. Danila buys a shotgun from his landlord, makes a sawed-off shotgun out of it and, rescuing his brother, kills Krugly and his men. In light of these events, Viktor is afraid that Danila will punish him for betrayal, but Danila calms him down, remembering sentimental memories from their childhood. Danila takes the briefcase with money from the apartment and advises his brother to return home to his mother and get a job with the police. Then he comes to Sveta, but, having witnessed her husband beating her again, he shoots him in the legs with the sawed-off shotgun. Unexpectedly for Danila, Sveta rushes to help her abusive husband, shouting at Danila that she does not love him and demanding that he leave. Having left Sveta, a frustrated Danila goes to Hoffman, discusses with him the pernicious influence of the big city on people and finally offers him money, but he refuses. Then Danila meets Kat, tells her about his departure and gives her a wad of rubles. The film ends with Danila walking out onto a snowy highway and hitchhiking toward Moscow.

Plot from Brother (1997 film)CC BY-SA 4.0