Rhino

Original Title: Nosorih

Directed by: Oleh Sentsov

Country: Ukraine

Length: 101 min.

Year: 2021

Premiere: Venice Film Festival 2021

Synopsis: the life of a gangster nicknamed 'rhino', in '90s Ukraine, as he comes to term with his own nature.

RATING: 3.5/5 

REVIEW

It is hard to disassociate a film from a genre, especially when it tackles a story that fits into one. This is the case of Rhino: a film that reductively can be dismissed as a "gangster movie", but that should be analysed beyond its surface story.

It is true, Rhino's plot is hardly different from that of any classic movie centered on crimelords, a genre that has had quite a fortune in Hollywood: the film essentially follows as a young kid, Vova, joins the ranks of a local crime organisation and rises to power in '90s Ukraine. But the opening scene goes further back - Rhino is a child, cutting sunflowers for fun, fighting other kids in brutal fashion. His return home unleashes an incredible hidden cut long take that encapsulates his teenage years and family's life. At the conclusion, Rhino doesn't feel like a gangster movie as much as an encompassing life story, a film that manages somehow to describe an entire existence - a feeling usually conveyed by large hollywood biopics but that Sentsov achieved remarkably in an 100 minutes long film. Additionally, Rhino does not glamourise violence or its protagonist in any way. Often, the more gruesome violent events even occur off-screen. Rhino never gets the charm or charisma of a Scarface, or a Corleone, and he shouldn't. Serhii Sternenko, a far-right activist that is active in the Azov battalion, is certainly a casting choice that could appear controversial, but his massive appearance somehow makes him the perfect fit for this role.

The existentialist thread intertwines with an ethical-moral dilemma: early on the film estabilishes a narrative frame, that sees him sitting in a car, recounting his past to an unnamed man, in a somewhat abstract placement, that in a way mimics a confessional, in which the character seems to show remorse for his actions. Through this, the film introduces a reflection on the immoral nature of criminal life seen from the perspective of its perpetrator, without however refraining from a moral judgement on him: Rhino has no redemption - even if the mysterious man suggests otherwise - and all his justifications and pretty monologues on the meaning of life or on human nature are revealed to be ramblings of a psyche broken by guilt, traumatised by his own horrific actions.

Rhino is to date the only film that Oleh Sentsov directed with freedom and considerable assets, and is really his first - and for the moment, only - proper piece of cinema that does not feel limited by external factors. In that, it is proof of his skills as a director, his nuances as a screenwriter.

Read here the original review, posted on November 9th, 2021.