Brigada

The movie is extremely realistic of what happened in Russia in 1989 - 2000 - actually it just shows the top of the iceberg, but it shows enough to imagine what is beneath. "Brigada" is a great story about 4 friends that remains friends in spite of all that happened. May be you can named it the Russian 'Godfather' movie. It is exactly so great. Actors are great performers. Sounds are great. Surroundings and details till the time span shown - 11 years - are true and absolutely realistic. I couldn't find any weak point in all movie. There is a lot of persons in the movie with their own destiny shown but not in a helter-skelter way or heaviness - rather you can feel with all your being the atmosphere in Russia in these years of changes and the Russian's feelings and spirit.

And in the end - the movie is so well done that on many occasions you just wonder - to cry or to laugh. It is for sure one of the best movies I saw in the last years.

Hi everyone, My brother has been telling me about Brigada movie for months. I was able to find it ate the library and I finally watched it. Let me tell you, I was so hooked, I hardly did anything around the house. What a fantastic work. ABSOLUTELY should be shown in America. I am surprised it didn't get any foreign film award.I agree, the subtitles weren't that great. Some expressions came out wrong based on cultural differences and word meanings and if they fix all that, they should show this on the American screens. The actors are fantastic. You can feel that they put their hearts and souls in the roles. I loved Sasha, especially I loved Phil. He is my favorite, oh... I don't know, I loved them all. Wonderful, wonderful!!!

I think"Brigada" is one of the best shows I have seen on TV in last few years.I have watched it twice,the crew,music,idea everything I like when it comes to mafia stories.Also I can understand how can bad subtitles spoil a good story,but that wasn't my problem and my friends(Russian is very similar to Serbian).My only hope is that there will be more shows like"Brigada"to come from Russia(Hollywood is having problem with stories that have already been told)I love the passion and dedication of actors,which you can not see in Hollywood production.

PS(I have told everyone I know about how excellent"Brigada"is and now all my friend are fascinated with Sergei Bezrukov)

There should be more detail on the movie in IMDB. For now, I assume it is the multipart series that we have on DVD. It is an excellent movie and my wife loves it. Unfortunately, I speak very little Russian. I think it would have an much better audience in the US if the subtitles were redone. In fact, my only dislike for the movie so far is related to subtitles.

They are very incomplete. Some of them are even in Russian. Not only that, but the names of the characters should not be translated. If someone is saying "Belov", I don't think it should be translated as "White". The same with "Bee", and the others. One subtitle even said "Michael Gorbachev". There were several instances of the word "dump" showing up instead of "dumb". A police complaint was referred to as an "application" and another similar word to application that would not be understood as "complaint". In my mind, the person who wrote the subtitles should find another job.

So, Avatar.. Fix the subtitles and you may have a hit in the English speaking world.

This movie is similar to the reality in Russia in the past and what is at present in my country - Bulgaria... It's about an enormous Russian mafia-empire built with the common effort of a young Russian mafioso called Sasha Belov and his BRIGADA (which means Brigade from Russian). The film is based on true story of a real criminal group and the film shows the whole history of 4 old friends helping each other from bad interests.

I think that most of the English-speaking viewers can't really understand some things, which are happening in the movie, but for me as a Bulgarian (my culture and the Russian culture are almost one and the same) everything from the mafia-thing in Russia is clear to me. There was a user of IMDb who said, that the subs were not very good. It's because there are jokes and phrases that aren't understandable to others except east-European countries. It's better to read something about the Russian mafia, before you watch the series , that will help you understand thе film better. For me this film is a blockbuster, in fact the nowadays American rubbish that we watch is 0 in compare to this unbelievable true story of Sasha Belov and his BRIGADA.

10 out of 10