If you enjoyed the new movie version of Dostoevsky's "Idiot"...

[Inna Caron]

...then (and this is just to follow up on the previous post recommending
"Proekt Goblina") you must see the recent action flick "Okhota na
piran'iu" (2006).

This film will most likely do nothing for the students of Russian, but
it will tremendously entertain the esteemed users of this list, even if
they are not into fist, knife, and sword fights on top of a moving
train.

The plot is built around a canonical confrontation between the good,
embodied in polkovnik spetsnaza, and the evil, personified in a crime
lord with bleached hair. The real kicker, however, is in the fact that
the heroic polkovnik is played by V. Mashkov, who starred in the above
classic as Rogozhin, while his sadistic adversary is played by E.
Mironov, AKA knyaz' Myshkin.

The latter looks a little better nourished, but has the same intonations
and mannerisms that made him so convincing in the Dostoevsky-based
mini-series. Now, imagine the good prince shifting from "Krasota spaset
mir" to a gem of a line "Vse svoi popytki uvidet' vo mne chto-libo
chelovecheskoe mozhesh' zasunut' sebe v ..." (I spare the list users the
full quotation).

I watched this film in a mixed Russian-American company, where everyone
was fluent in Russian and sufficiently familiar with "Idiot" - both the
novel and the mini-series. I confess, we watched the fights between the
main characters a few more times, having muted the sound, and competing
in providing the best Goblin-inspired dubbing, producing the inevitable:
"Gde zhe eto ty, Lev Nikolaevich, nauchilsya tak nogami makhat' - v
psikhushke?"
"A eto tebe za Nastas'iu Filippovnu!" etc.

I highly recommend it as a light entertainment. And speaking of which, I
would like to give belated thanks to everyone who posted the Shtirlitz
jokes a couple of weeks ago!

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