Ordinary people in a fiery trap

Guy Richie film "Translator" heads Russian rental

He had to reach Russian screens back in April, but then the triumph of the domestic cosmic blockbuster “Call” would interfere.

The unexpected new Guy Richie. “Translator” (I like the original name: Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (an unspoken, indestructible covenant, duty, contract, promise) - a daring and tough thriller, psychological quest and Isterens not so much about the war in Afghanistan as about male friendship.

2018. The American army in Afghanistan has been almost twenty years old, and during this time tens of thousands of local residents began to work for it in exchange for the promised visas and relocation in the United States for them and their families, mainly as translators. Self -confident and even a little smug sergeant John Kinley (Jake Jillenhale) continues, and very successfully, with his coordinated detachment to fight with the Taliban (recognized as a terrorist and prohibited organization in Russia). His unit hunts for hidden warehouses of ammunition and explosives. On the next task during the explosion of a truck (characteristic, the translator dies, filled with explosives). We have to take not too friendly, with a bad character, but speaking in the four languages ​​of Ahmed Ahmed (Gift Salim from the Game of Thrones), who has personal scores with fellow tribesmen. And unlike the “aliens”, he better understands, feels the local customs, predicts an inevitable ambush. But the "aliens" are too arrogant. And soon the detachment is interrupted.

Ahmed is left alone with a seriously wounded blue -eyed American sergeant, whom he will drag more than a hundred kilometers in scorched steppes and hills. So the difficult path to salvation will begin, which will turn out to be much more complicated than even a saved viewer can imagine ...

There are tense relations between them in accordance with the Hegelian law of the struggle and the unity of opposites. Ahmed will save a seriously wounded kinley, pull it out of mortal danger, drag it out, crawls ... And Kinli, who has already been buried in his homeland, will owe him his life ... but then the soldier’s injured war will have to fight with the mills of the bureaucracy, which will turn out to be the same impenetrable wall as a stranger country with its dark laws and impassable deserts. Okay, you are ready to sacrifice yourself, commit a feat. But how to defeat these mechanical voices "Your call is very important for us: do not switch!".

And the most difficult thing is to cope with your own conscience, a feeling of guilt and duty.

Richie makes a cool male cinema without moralizing cliches about the front -line brotherhood according to the canons of a classic military blockbuster, abandoning the signature jumping installation, fucker, cheerful cynicism and absurdity of dialogs. The film continues the restrained brutal style of “human wrath” (2021). And again, concentrated primarily on the main characters of the heroes on the alternating current of their relationship.

Alan Stewart is a permanent Richie operator (“human anger”, “Fortune”, “gentlemen” operations) chooses gigantic panoramas, indifferent, sun -dried landscapes, on which a person seems especially vulnerable and small, shooting with drones, vertical movement of the cameras. It seems to be falling, approaching Kinley, which flows into oblivion, in order to see from his point of view to see the world losing the real outlines. There, in this altered world, someone will give him the last drops of water from a flask. And the viewer will be carried away by dizzying chases along steep slopes, short and terrible battles with an unobvious outcome.

They need each other with all seemingly insoluble external contradictions. For all the dissimilarity, they are similar. Everyone has a family, a beloved wife. Everyone dreams of happiness ... without war. In order not to kill their children. Ordinary people ... finding themselves in a fiery trap. Pulling each other, risking themselves. Those who could become enemies turned out to be partners ... by the art of survival.

The dramaturgy of Richie and his co -authors Aivan Atkinson and Marna Davis are so detailed, full of nuances that it seems: the film is based on real events. This is wrong. More precisely, not quite so: the plot is inspired by a number of tragic stories of Afghan translators who have worked with the US armed forces for many years. They were promised visas, then they were thrown in a hostile country after the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021, when the Taliban came to power.

The collaborators were persecuted and executed, thousands of disagreements, including translators, tried to leave the country ... mostly unsuccessfully.

There will be many photos of hypothetical prototypes of the heroes of the film in the final.

And I remembered the military translator Alexei Balabanov, who flew to Ethiopia, Angola, Guinea, South Yemen and Syria with military transport aircraft-the Soviet Union supplied weapons to these states. He also accompanied “black tulips”-An-12 aircraft from Afghanistan with “cargo 200”.

But this is another story.

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