Brother

The film "Brother" is by far my personal favorite of all the films we've viewed in this class. The story follows Danila as me moves to St. Petersburg and successfully dismantles the mafia that his brother works for. He also commits many acts of vigilantism along the way. He seems to not enjoy the many violent acts he commits but views these acts as necessary for the greater good of everyone. Almost all of the friends he makes in St. Petersburg, do not condone his acts of violence and by the end of the movie they disown him for these acts, although many of these act are for the benefit of these friends. The way the film ends up depicting Danila is a loner that always tries to help the downtrodden by the means he knows best. There is no question that he does many violent things but I would not call him a violent man. He does not enjoy these acts and accepts the punishment for them (such as getting shot himself, and his friends disowning him). He is, however, rather adept at killing people. He has many tricks that he uses to be a more effective killer, and it is unclear where he learned tricks like these. The film mentions several times that he faught in the army but I highly doubt that the army would teach people how to make homemade silencers and how to create better bullets.
Danila also has a profound attachment to music in the film. His music always seems to be one of his top priorities. By the end of the movie music ends up saving his life by a bullet being stopped by his walkman. This could be a metaphor that the arts can/will save the Russian community and it's people. Around this time the government was strongly pushing it's arts to the rest of the world to gain respect among other countries. His love of music brings him across a few Americans and some American music which are both portrayed as being just kind of dumb and lacking any real intelligence. Even the Frenchman he meets is shown as a bumbling idiot that all he does is nod and smile, despite the fact that Danila is making fun of him.