Back in the U.S.S.R.

By Borys Kit

Don't call Timur Bekmambetov a Russian. Meet the director of the Russian-language "Nightwatch" and the new Angelina Jolie comic-book movie "Wanted," and he'll be quick to tell you that he's not Russian and that living in Russia hasn't influenced his fantasy-flavored filmmaking at all.

The Soviet Union? Well, that’s a different matter. Timur grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and was so deeply embedded in it that among his influences he cites...Josef Stalin?

"(The Soviet Union) was a fantasy world created by one man, and his name was Stalin, and he created and controlled everything," Timur said. "How to dress, how to drink, how to talk, how to think. He was the producer."

Timur continued,  "We lived for seventy years in a fantasy movie created by one person. It gave us a sensibility and the ability to believe different things. That influences your way of thinking."

If that's the case, then the legacy of the Cold War may not be as grim after all. Timur's new film has a kind of Fight Club-meets-The Matrix vibe, takes effective jabs at corporate culture and offers some pretty stylish slow-mo gun action. Just don't look for the Beatles and blue jeans.