| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Ed Stoppard | ... | Misha | |
| Leelee Sobieski | ... | Abby | |
| Jeffrey Tambor | ... | Bob | |
| Max von Sydow | ... | Marketing Guru | |
|
|
Mariya Ignatova | ... | Master of Ceremony (as Maria Ignatova) |
|
|
Roman Petrenko | ... | Fast Food Executive #1 |
|
|
Anastasiya Nefedova | ... | Fast Food Executive #2 (as Anastasia Nefedova) |
|
|
Nick Harvey | ... | Fast Food Executive #3 |
|
|
John Laskowski | ... | Fast Food Executive #4 |
|
|
Douglas A. Reno | ... | Fast Food Executive #5 (as Douglas Reno) |
|
|
Gary Brierley | ... | Fast Food Executive #6 |
| Andrey Kaykov | ... | Pavel (as Andrei Kaikov) | |
|
|
Viktoriya Popova | ... | Screaming Woman (as Viktoria Popova) |
|
|
Jamie Bradshaw | ... | Mr. Johnson |
| Viktor Verzhbitskiy | ... | Yuri Nikolaevich (scenes deleted) (as Viktor Verzhbitsky) | |
The film starts with documentary-style flashbacks showing Misha's rise to a powerful marketing executive. Now in Moscow 2017, Misha is a powerful marketing executive working to spread Western brands, and like the businesses he works for nothing will stop him in his greed, until the imprisonment and death of an overweight girl undergoing extensive plastic surgery to become skinny. Following a vision in which Misha sacrifices a heifer to God, he begins to receive strange visions depicting the brands control over people. He returns to work and guided by these visions, Misha attempts to stop the growth of the brands in post-Communist Russia by encouraging the brand to attack each other in their advertising campaigns. There is some debate whether Misha believes that the worship of global brands is Idolatry and his visions depicting the brands are controlling people causing them to sin, or whether his belief is that monopoly is evil and his intention is to create a Western style free-market...
It seems that a lot of people are threatened by simple truths in this film. Fat people don't want to be told that their food choices are being influenced by advertising. The negative ratings come from the mirror held in front of the faces of the audience, the negativity is a reflection of the shame of being overweight or the reflection of their own brands that they are wearing and the value they put in them.
This is an original film that doesn't fit the current Hollywood blockbuster mold, but rather it requires self-examination of what influences human choices.
There are a lot of word salad reviews on this movie already, no need for another. Go in with no expectations, come out with a cleaner view of the world and start to understand why you're craving your McDonalds/Coke/Idevice.
Check it out and be pleasantly rewarded - unless your own reflection reflects something too unpleasant to accept....