Thriller by Kirill Chemnitz “Centaur” is released. Review

Kirill Chemnitz’s thriller “Centaur” about the adventures of an unusual taxi driver and escort with a heart of gold in Moscow at night is released. Tells Yulia Shagelman.

For some reason, the press of Centaur is called the full-length debut of Kirill Chemnitz, although his filmography includes, for example, the 2013 film Zombie Holidays with a running time of 95 minutes and an impressive audience rating on Kinopoisk: 1.5 out of 10 points. However, everyone knows what happens to those who remember the old, and the new film by Chemnitz is at least firmly knocked down, shamelessly filmed by the cameraman Robert Sarukhanyan, who worked, for example, on the TV series Epidemic, and played by good actors. None of them goes beyond the already established roles: Yura Borisov is an ordinary guy, the same as everyone else, with an open boyish smile, Anastasia Talyzina is a beautiful tearaway, Sergey Gilev is a villain on the verge of psychopathy, not without reason informing the heroine that his she should be more afraid than a maniac-murderer who hunts in the city. Surprising is the very short exit of Ksenia Kutepova closer to the finale, but in the end, films like “Centaur” are not primarily watched for the sake of acting discoveries.

In the list of producers of the picture, of which there are as many as six, Ilya Naishuller ranks first, two years ago he presented his Hollywood directorial debut “Nobody” – an exercise on the favorite action theme “a simple layman confronts the bad guys and wins, because in fact he does not so simple.” And although among the references of “Centaur” Naishuller mentions “Taxi Driver” by Martin Scorsese (where would it be without him in a film about a taxi driver), “Drive” by Nicolas Winding Refn (where would it be without him in a film depicting the underside of a big city in a fashionable flower color) and even ” Brother” by Alexei Balabanov (well, this is a mandatory item for any young Russian filmmaker), the tape is most similar to American production of category B from somewhere in the nineties, which clearly had an invaluable influence on his own work.

In the prologue of “Centaur”, we see the body of a young woman in the back seat of a car – whether she is dead or simply unconscious is not yet clear. Some man pulls her to the side of the road, the audience can only see the silhouette and shaved head. Who these people will become clear later, but while the city falls asleep, Sasha (Borisov) wakes up – a taxi driver who has become so merged with his car that he even lives in a garage. He prefers to work at night, when there are fewer traffic jams and people on the streets. However, he has a keen interest in people and starts a conversation with each passenger, preventing him from getting from point A to point B in peace and quiet. Sasha flaunts his ability to see through a person and reveal all his secrets in a couple of minutes: for example, he instantly understands that the first night passenger who ordered a taxi from the hotel to the house is lying to his wife that he goes on business trips, and he meets his mistress, and why something considers it necessary to tell him about it, causing a whole reciprocal confession.

However, this insight does not prevent Sasha from taking orders that immediately smell of something suspicious. So, he gives a ride to a twitchy young man (Grigory Vernik), who only says on his forehead to stay away from him, offering five thousand in cash for a trip that is not registered in the application. And then he immediately takes Liza (Talyzin) on board, in which he immediately identifies a sex worker. Their acquaintance starts on an unfortunate note: Sasha does not hide his contempt for the profession of a passenger, she snaps, but then these two literally and figuratively broken people find a common language.

Of course, Lisa will not be exactly who she claims to be, but Sasha also seems to be hiding something, and very dangerous people follow them on their heels, using both of them in some kind of incomprehensible, but obviously sinister game. The authors diligently pump up suspense, but they do it with varying degrees of success. But things are better with the action: here the “Centaur” focuses more on Korean and Hong Kong samples, and the chases and stunts look, although completely implausible, but spectacular. The film does not pursue realism at all – it is a distilled genre film in which, despite the signs of real restaurants and gas stations flashing in the frame, the circumstances of time and place do not matter.