It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

I don't know if anyone noticed that most critical, "one star" reviews emphasize the movie's agenda rather than anything else: the primary object of their critique is not a play by the individual actors, extreme violence or disgusting scenes but director's attitude toward Soviet reality. An they are right. Every small detail in the movie is intended to show that it was indeed rotten and decaying society. The year 1984 was chosen not by the accident: it is the answer to Orwell' book "1984" where British author tried to predict how the communist society would look in 25 years. Balabanov's answer: it is worse than Orwell could even imagine. The letters "USSR" on the T-shirt are not accidental either. This is another Balabanov's answer, this time to the official Soviet literature which presented young people (komsomol)as heroes, ready to sacrifice themselves in defense of their mother-Russia or save little babies from the fire. This real "businessman-komsomolets", who was educated by the Soviet reality, who saw how Soviet officials meet fallen soldiers from Afghanistan, won't do anything like that. Indeed, the movie wants to say that such pervert like captain Zhurov could live anywhere, in any country. However, he could thrive only in USSR, in the country which lost its soul. Great movie.

"Cargo 200" is my favorite Balabanov's film. By showing and perhaps exaggerating a lot of elements director has personally seen in eighties USSR he has created a very successful metaphorical movie. Most obviously it's of a metaphor for decline of USSR, but even shocking parallels with very recent crimes of Russian policemen the year "Cargo 200" came out had shown that the metaphor is much broader. It is also to a large extent about modern Russia and perhaps even people and society in general. The genre is mixed, taking horror to the extreme and mixing contrasting details of an era creates an absurdist Pyton-esque humor in a lot of scenes at least for those who can understand it (a lot of Russian viewers and critics didn't get this type of humor, which is much more prevalent in western culture today, popularized by the likes of South Park, more familiar to younger "global Russians"). A lot in this movie from transgressive story to political and historical elements is very provocative and makes it hard for a lot of people to see the movie itself behind all the provocative elements and all the emotional buttons it pushes. Even in comments on IMDb you can see of strong, sometimes outraged, reactions to this movie and they are 10 times stronger in Russia where history is a much more touchy subject, there are more taboos, at least in media, and the view of cinema and humor is generally more conservative.I personally won't necessarily call it a realist movie, it is a metaphor first and foremost. But a lot of details of the era are very precise - the music, the gorgeously decayed and familiar (if you have lived in Russia) set designs are a pleasure, albeit maybe a perverse one, to observe in this film. All in all, a lot in "Cargo 200" just works. It was conceived and developed in the right place at the right time, a lot of elements of the movie and historical artifacts and collective memories that inspired it just came together very effectively. Seems like this movie wanted to be created and found a great creator in the late great Aleksey Balabanov, becoming one of his strongest works.

Here is what Balabanov wants to tell us. "Russian people" (Aleksey) drinks, believes in God and dreams of the City of the Sun. "Russian people" sat in prison in the past (reference to the Gulag) and remains indebted to "political regime" (Captain Zhurov). The latter of course is a mockery of the Soviet propaganda's idea that people "owe" a lot to Soviet power. Zhurov commits a crime by killing a Vietnamese (which can be read as the regime's crimes against the non-Russians), but it is the "people" (Aleksey) who become inculpated and executed. "Remember, you owe me something," says Captain Zhurov ("political regime") to Aleksey ("the people"). "Russia" is represented simultaneously as a mother (Captain Zhurov's alcoholic mother), a wife (Antonina, Aleksey's wife) and a bride (Angelica). Political regime turns "Russia-as-mother" into a hopeless degenerate (through alcohol and TV addiction). Then, political regime turns "Russia-as-wife" into a widow (the execution of Aleksey – "the people") and finally it violates "Russia-as-bride". It first presents "Russia-as-bride" with a dead corpse of her bride-groom (paratrooper killed in Afghanistan (or Chechnia?)). Since, "political regime" (and Captain Zhurov) is sexually impotent and cannot substitute the bride-groom, it has an ugly criminal (urka) violate "Russia-as-bride" (Angelika) and then completes the girl's torment by reading her the letters of the dead fiancée (Soviet propaganda's cynical play on the sacred feelings?). "Political regime" professes love to "Russia-as-bride" but opines that this love is unrequited. Antonina ("Russia-as-widow") kills Captain Zhurov (a reference to Russian rebellion), but that of course does not restore the lost purity of Angelica ("Russia-as-bride") Russian rebellion is, after all, bloody and senseless. The crucial thing is that the story does not show the way towards redemption. The teacher of "scientific atheism" (Artem) comes to the Church to be baptized, but the sacrament (if it really happened) remains off-screen. The bottom-line is that political regime is a sadist violator from which there is no escape. In the end, what effect did the director seek to achieve with such a representation? Only one: he wanted the viewer to have the feeling that it is he or she who has (is) been violated. Both the rape featured in this film and the symbolic rape that is stands for, serve to obscure the fact that the actual rape happens in the course of watching the film and that the real rapist is not Zhurov (political regime) or its proxy (criminal), but the film itself. Its goal is to turn the people watching it into a raped subject and thereby complete the material, moral and psychological destruction that the country has experienced for a quarter of a century. It imposes upon the viewer a socio-political imagery (characters and relations between them) which deranges the mind, paralyzes the will and renders meaningless any action. It is the deadliest film I have seen in my life. It should have been cut to pieces and its director placed into a mental asylum, for, needless to say, the fantasy of inescapable rape could emerge only in a profoundly diseased mind.

As a great fan of Aleksey Balabanov movies I probably expected too much from this film and was rather disappointed thereafter. The greatest problem that this movie faces is the lack of the feature film plot. When made in dark style film should use dynamic plot to make up for absence of light as it is effective plot balance. Otherwise it becomes dull, which is the case with this movie. Gruz 200 is following the bitter and creepy faith of the young woman in the last decade of USSR existence. Literally following, because camera goes after her many times disregarding the development of other actions. What film shows that happened to her can be put in just two sentences. Film needs much more than that, otherwise we could go to Somalia, take our camera, find the place of greatest atrocities and shoot the person that was the greatest subject of somebody's tyranny and sadism. Pity for all the film efforts, especially brilliant acting and fantastic camera, could have been better, if the plot axis had been developed more carefully.