Tycoon:
A New Russian (in Russian the title is Oligarkh),
directed by Pavel Lounguine, is a loose biopic about
Russian billionaire and Kremlin fixer Boris A. Berezovky,
whose cinematic embodiment is as Platon Makovski (played
by Vladimir Mashkov). In a larger sense, the film is
an exposé of the Russian economic system, where
entrepreneurs dodge both bureaucrats and bullets. Told
in the genre of Citizen Kane,
the confusing story switches back and forth between
his meteoric fifteen-year economic ascent and the five-day
investigation after his death. Those familiar with
how the official economy in the Soviet Union competed
with the black market will not be mystified as Plato
steers his avaricious compulsions over a transition
from 1985 to 2000 (from Gorbachëv to Yelstin)
while avoiding efforts of General Koretski (played
by Alexandre Baluev), an agent of the Secret Service
(successor to the KGB), to rein in his semilegal activities
as his wife, Maria (played by Maria Mironova), has
an affair with the playboy megacapitalist. Makovski
starts by making brooms, then somehow trading brooms
for motorcars, until he forms Infocar, a giant corporation.
To do so, he first pays the state managers of Lada
for their remaining inventory, and soon he imports
cars from Western Europe, making so much money that
he can buy a television station. When a few goons,
presumably former employees of the auto factory, demand
money for allowing the original purchase of Soviet
autos, he becomes a "mob capitalist" by hiring
a Uzbek who is in charge of an entire criminal syndicate
of goons. To bypass the Customs Office, which solicits
a bribe to allow auto imports to enter the Russian
market, he buys the bank where customs fees are deposited.
On the way up, Makovski rewards some of his fellow
university students by awarding them key roles in his
empire, but he makes enemies in both the private and
public sectors as he tramples on economic fiefdoms,
and his enemies in turn try to buy off some of his
friends. When Koretski puts formidable roadblocks in
his way one day, he endorses a longshot candidate for
president, foolishly hoping thereby to change the political
guard in his favor. However, one day he is assassinated.
Police investigator Chmakov (played by Andrew Krasko)
is charged with the task of finding out who ordered
him gunned down, a quest that enables him to peek too
deeply into the forbidden inner workings of the politicoeconomic
system, so his boss eventually decides that an easier
approach is to provide a phony explanation to the public,
which probably would not believe an honest account
in a country that is accustomed to a sea of disinformation.
The film is based on the novel Bolshaya Paika by
Yuli Dubov, former employee of Berezovky, once one
of the ten richest persons in the world, who showed
how capitalist enterprises could flourish despite government
leaders who enriched themselves by privatizing state
enterprises for themselves rather than establishing
a legal-rational bureaucracy to facilitate free market
capitalism. Accordingly, the Political Film Society
has nominated Tycoon: A New Russian for
best film exposé of 2003. MH
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