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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films
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TYCOON
Directed by: Pavel Lounguine.
Produced by: Catherine Dussart & Vladimir Grigoriev.
Written by: Alexandre Borodianski, Lounguine, & Yuli Dubov, based on the novel The Big Slice by Dubov.
Director of Photography: Alexey Fedorov & Oleg Dobronravov.
Edited by: Sophie Brunet.
Music by: Leonid Diesyatnikov.
Released by: New Yorker.
Country of Origin: Russia. 128 min. Not Rated.
With: Vladimir Mashkov.
Tycoon follows the rise and fall of a self-made power broker, made rich through
dubious business deals. Moving backwards and forwards in time over the course of 15
years (in which the actors’ hairstyles change, but hardly age) the film follows Platon
(Mahkov) from his student days in the communist USSR to his sudden transformation
into a shady car-importer turned media mogul in capitalist Russia. Determined to be
successful at all costs, he becomes the object of the government’s animosity as tensions
and plots break out among his consortium, which includes college chums and his
childhood friend Moussa (whose friendship is tardily explained at the film’s end). A
melodrama stuffed with too many ill-defined relationships, Tycoon packs in one
convoluted plot too many, playing out like a Russian version of “Who Shot J.R.,” except
the characters are so thinly written that you don’t love to hate Platon and the plots against
him seem unmotivated. However, those who have followed Russian current events may
have an easier grasp of the film’s backstory. With his hair slicked back (movie shorthand
for sleazy) Mahkov undoubtedly has charisma to burn, and there are humorous scenes of
an unknown Siberian bumpkin being groomed by Platon for national candidacy, but there
is little else to hold interest here.
KT
June 13, 2003
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