Saturday, October 11, 2003

By Barry Paris, Post-Gazette Movie Critic

I'm always telling you more than you want to know about foreign film titles, but really ... a "tycoon" is a powerful industrialist. An "oligarch" is one of the rulers of government by-the-few. The former is the wholly erroneous English translation of the latter (and actual) title of Pavel Lounguine's very noir, very Russian variation of "The Godfather."

	"Tycoon" Rating: PG-13 for violence Starring: Vladimir Mashkov, Mariya Mironova, Aleksandr Baluyev, Levani Outchaneichvili Director: Pavel Lounguine

Whatever they choose to call, it is an elegant rendering of the complex life of Plato (Vladimir Mashkov), a genius of a logician with an even greater genius for entrepreneurism in the economic anarchy of "The New Russia."

He is assassinated (on the 13th attempt) at the very outset of the film. Whodunnit? Everything that follows is in nonsequential flashbacks dating back to pre-Yeltsin Soviet years. The money-making starts with some small-time scams, culminating in a phony corporation that makes billions selling "brooms" -- actually, Mercedes-Benzes -- through payoffs to customs' officials.

But it's not just the Russky Godfather. The cast of characters, like the corruption itself, includes not merely mob and cop types but reaches up to the highest political and socioeconomic levels in the land. Need a scapegoat for something? Just blame the Chechens -- Russia's equivalent of Saddam Hussein.

Mashkov is brilliant in the lead. He's a cool-as-a-cucumber Slavic kind of Yves Montand -- a guy who, with a blackboard and piece of chalk, can prove to you that an alligator is both wider and greener than longer. He (and the film) are derived from a true story.

There's plenty of crime and plenty of punishment -- all of it of the "tasteful" rather than Tarantino sicko-violent variety, accompanied by booze, a moody saxophone and some wry Russian humor. The vodka flows freely in "Tycoon," as it does throughout Russia -- pre-, present- or post-Communism -- an integral part of the culture and the culture's alcoholic malaise. Somebody kvetches that, "Pretty soon, we'll be importing snow from abroad."

It brought to mind a wild evening I spent with Pavel Lounguine 15 years ago at Josephine's in New York, when the vodka was flowing even more freely in celebration of the director's triumphant debut-success, "Taxi Blues."

"He won't last," a big-time Manhattan editor said to me on the way out.

"Don't be so sure," said I.

My favorite words in Russian (or any language) are, "Ya tak vam skazal" -- I told ya so.

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