PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS Movie Review

Kavkazsky Plennik
Prisoner of the Caucasus

Two Russian soldiers whose small unit has been ambushed are taken prisoner by Chechen rebels who hope to swap them for hostages held in a Russian jail. The mother of one of the soldiers (who's played by director Sergei Bodrov's son)—angered by the conflict and determined to get her boy back-sets off on foot to do what she can to deal directly with his captors and arrange for his release. Unexpected events, old antagonisms and sheer chance conspire to produce an unforeseen yet somehow inevitable conclusion for the hostages, yet nothing in the film happens exactly as we suspect it will. Though the recent conflict in Chechnya is the specific focal point, the story on which the movie is based is actually Tolstoy's 150-year-old Prisoner of the Caucasus; its updating here doesn't seem in the least a stretch. The universality of Bodrov's devastating Prisoner of the Mountains is such that the sudden appearance on the soundtrack at a crucial moment of Louis Armstrong's “What a Wonderful World” seems novel only in retrospect—the film's emotional power throughout is very real, deeply felt, and anything but a gimmick.

NEXT STOP … The Bridge, Kanal, Before the Rain

1996 (R) 98m/C RU Sergei Bodrov Jr., Oleg Menshikov, Djemal Sikharulidze, Susanna Mekhralieva, Alexander Burejev; D: Sergei Bodrov; W: Sergei Bodrov, Arif Aliev, Boris Giller; C: Pavel Lebeshev; M: Leonid Desyatnikov. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘96: Best Foreign Film; Golden Globe Awards ‘97: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS, LV ORI, MET