The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (2006)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Scott Z. Burns

Writers (WGA):

Scott Z. Burns (screenplay)
Ken Kalfus (short story "PU-239")

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

His family's future depends on one unstable element.

Plot:

A worker at a Russian nuclear facility gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to provide for his family, he steals some plutonium and sets out to sell it on Moscow's black market with the help of an incompetent criminal. |

Plot Keywords:

Black Market | Plutonium | Terminal Illness | Russia | Radiation Poisoning

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Paddy Considine	...	Timofey
Oscar Isaac	...	Shiv
Valeriu Pavel Dan	...	Red Army Hero
Kenneth Bryans	...	Prusokov
Radha Mitchell	...	Marina
Danya Baryshnikov	...	Tolya
Connor McIntyre	...	Facility Director
Derek Hutchinson	...	Facility Deputy
Jason Flemyng	...	Vlad
Jordan Long	...	Yegor
Xenia Alina Grigore	...	Lap Girl
Mélanie Thierry	...	Oxsana
Constantin Barbulescu	...	Dmitri
Oana Cojocaru	...	Svetlana
Stefan Iancu	...	Andrei

Also Known As:

Pu-239 (International: English title) (new title) (USA) (new title)
PU-239 (USA) (working title (TV title))

MPAA:

Rated R for language, violence, sexual content and brief drug use.

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:R | Australia:MA | Argentina:18 | Singapore:NC-16

Filming Locations:

Bucharest, Romania

Company:

Beacon Pictures

Goofs:

Plot holes: Tim states many times that his hometown is not on the map, which makes it impossible to send his letter home.

Quotes:

Timofey: [voiceover] An element loses a particle and becomes unstable. A chain reaction is set in motion. Pulsing waves of desperation in every direction. Perhaps the lost part is clarity or hope. In the fallout, the man-made elements appear- isotopes of fear and anger that cannot be handled safely or buried in the ground. They take the shape of a mushroom cloud started above a desert, that circles the globe and shadows us all.

Soundtrack:

Don't Forget

Great Film

Based on a short story by Ken Kalfus, PU-239 is about a man who worked all of his adult life in a nuclear processing facility, only to find himself contaminated beyond hope of survival because the plant is literally falling apart. Faced with precious little time to look out for his family's future, a good man does a bad thing, by stealing a small quantity of weapons grade plutonium to sell on the black market. His journey takes him to Moscow,where he must deal with Russian mobsters and street thugs while trying to survive long enough to make a transaction.

The film is filled with little facts about the power and dangers of radiation, and examples of the affect that perestroika has had on Russian society. The plot takes many turns as the main characters find themselves in one ironic situation after another. While the details may be contrived (hey - it's a movie), the basic plot is very plausible and the scary thing is how much enriched plutonium is actually unaccounted for in the former USSR.

I feel sure this film will be made available on DVD someday. But if you have access to HBO, watch it now. If you like dark satire and science, this films for you.