Un ami du défunt

In Kiev, Ukraine, the loser Anatoli (Aleksandr Lazarev) is a penniless unemployed translator and his wife is leaving him. When Anatoli meets by chance his former friend Dima (Evgeniy Pashin), he offers one thousand dollars to Anatoli to commit perjury in order that his boss gets the divorce from his wife. Further, he suggests that Anatoli hires the hit man Kostia (Konstantin Kostyshin) to assassin his wife's boyfriend. Anatoli is drunk and accepts the deal. However he regrets and he puts the contract on himself instead.

When Anatoli meets the prostitute Vika, a.k.a. Lena (Tatyana Krivitskaya), he changes his mind and hires the killer Ivan (Serhiy Romaniuk) to protect him. Ivan kills Kostia and Anatoli learns that he was married with Marina (Elena Korikova) and with a baby boy. Now Anatoli feels guilty and seeks out Marina to sympathize with her.

"Priyatel pokoynika" is one of those movies where the viewer fruitlessly expects that something will happen, but it won't. There are many promise premises to be explored but the story unfortunately goes nowhere. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Amigo do Defunto" ("The Friend of the Defunct")

I come from a russian family, and my parents love watching russian movies. I hate them! I hate them all! I can't stand it when they turn on the russian channel. Last night i was watching Showtime when i came across a russian voice! I started to wonder...if Showtime is showing this movie then it must be decent! I watched it from start to finish, and rarely read the subtitles (i only needed to read them when they spoke to fast). I thought it was a good movie. I really thought the ending was funny, and ironic. Give it a try...even if you hate russian flicks.

good movie, also very painful for anyone from that region of the world.

i warmly recommend it to americans - try something other than hollywood - it doesn't hurt...

This is a pleasant story and an interesting departure from the common fare at the video store. Although not spoken in English and with English subtitles, it is an easy story to follow and one soon forgets that the actors are not speaking English. The plot follows a simple and mostly predictable line, ending in an upbeat situation. My only regret was that I would like to have seen more of the situation on which the story ended. The actress that played the part of Marina, Yelana Korikova, was captivating, and rather than have her appear only near the end of the movie, I would have liked to have seen more of her and for that situation to have been reached sooner and then explored further before the movie ended.

Guys,

this is a pretty good movie. This is a really black (dark) comedy. This means nothing about the Russia, but it's cool. BTW,the translate from Russian to English is completely sucks. It seem the guy who made the translation know almost nothing about Russian language and about English as well.