Impact of The Film
Just like the first film, Brat-2 was an immense success. The film picked up on the changing attitudes of the Russian public in the late 1990s. It also shows the erosion of a common stereotype of the perfect West, which is seen as not so perfect. It shows the immense divide between the Black and White communities with the former ghettoised. Also it shows that just like in Russia, the high profile businessmen can have very criminal activities, too. One of the most powerful messages was the final confrontation when Danila asks Manis if money really gives one strength and power, and instead argues that strength and power can only be found in the truth.
At the same time, the film highlights the good America, but from a different perspective not in the façade of skyscrapers and the "American Dream", but in the American people who like in Russia come in all colours and social status, like the Black TV presenter Lisa Jeffrey who has a short affair with Danila and the trucker Ben who at the very end of the film, accepts an audio cassette with Russian music which the two listened whilst driving. Finally on humorous note the film carried across the message that hardships and people's discomfort with life exists everywhere as shown by the two complaining taxi drivers both in Moscow and in New York.
The film was however criticised for being too Russo-centric and in extreme cases the elements of racism and nationalism. For example the semi-criminal portrayal of the American Black community, the deceiving Russo-American Jew (who sells him a bad car) and the Ukrainian mafia. The latter in particular often refers to the toilet scene when Viktor finishes off in cold blood remarking: "You bitches will answer to me for Sevastopol!" referring to the sensitive topic on the ownership of that city. Ukrainians are also called banderovets by Viktor (e.g. when he arrives at the airport), what does not appear in English subtitles. Albeit, the listed scenes have clear humorous overtones.
In October 2009, the film received mention in a discussion of how the city of Chicago is perceived internationally.
Read more about this topic: Brother 2
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“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or despatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)