Jason Bourne in Russian: how Petrov and Mashkov played scouts in the Hero movie

Even at the stage of pitching the tape “Hero” in the Film Fund, it became clear that the director Karen Hovhannisyan plans to make a movie genre similar to the franchises about spies Jason Bourne and James Bond.

In fact, that’s how it happened. Hand-to-hand fighting, gunfights, car chases, conspiracies and intelligence operations - all the components of a high-quality espionage thriller in the film are. A bonus to the film is the father-sons conflict.

According to the plot of The Hero, Colonel Oleg Rodin (Vladimir Mashkov) is the father of the main character Andrei (Alexander Petrov) and the founder of the super secret special school Yunost, where he trained future employees for the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). It was Rodin (as we later learn, not without the help of the SVR) that assembled and prepared a team of young intelligence officers. After successfully completing the “young fighter's course,” they were sent under the guise of exchange students abroad, where they lived, waiting for an order.

However, the order was never received - Oleg Rodin died tragically. Fifteen years after the death of the founder of the project, one of her pupils decided to publicly disclose “Youth” (by this time a whole series of anti-Russian actions had already been launched in Europe, and the warning hashtag #Russiazatvoyspina spread in the network). The scout will not succeed in making a sensational statement, however, they will still talk about a secret special project abroad.

This will mark the beginning of a series of strange circumstances in which Andrei Rodin, who has departed from Yunost, will be forced to cooperate with fellow student Masha Rakhmanova (Svetlana Khodchenkova), and then go to Russia to find, as it turned out, a living father.

When watching this film, viewers will inevitably have associations with other films about spies. So in the scenario of the “Hero”, you can see parallels with the TV series by Georgy Nikolayenko about teenage intelligence officers, Operation Color of the Nation. An analogy can be drawn with the full-length picture "Salt" with Angelina Jolie.

But talking about plot plotting, of course, is impossible - in “Hero” scouts scattered across different countries of the world do not threaten the security of any state, and do not work for the benefit of the plot. The main emphasis, as expected, is shifted towards the love line and, of course, the relationship between father and son. Rodin Jr. recalls his relationship with his father with coolness: it was always difficult for him to achieve parental attention, and with the launch of the Youth project, Rodin Sr. finally moved away from his son (and he, in turn, from work in the project).

Attention: spoilers!

Annoying, however, is a love story (spoilers): among the traitors of Yunost is Masha Rakhmanova. It seems that even this is ready to forgive Andrei Rodin. But, to my pleasant surprise, the film does not follow the path of Roman Prygunov's “Billion”, justifying the antagonists - everyone deserves their credit here. So with the scenario twists, the creators of "Hero" did not disappoint.

• © Shot from the movie “Hero” (2019)

They did not deceive the viewer with promises of intense action scenes and extreme pursuits. Leading Russian and European stage directors of stunts and stuntmen were invited to work on the project, the result of which, for example, was a spectacular scene with the flights of heroes on wingsuits.

Hovhannisyan did not use a mechanical approach to making the film: the movie turned out to be inventive, adventurous and, as Petrov mentioned in an interview, with humor. The actor noted the genre proximity of “Hero” to “Deadpool” and the tape “Kingsman: Secret Service” (however, the validity of such comparisons will be independently assessed by everyone).

It is also pleasant that, contrary to the fears of moviegoers, the "Billion" released in the spring did not become the last screen role of Vladimir Mashkov. Since the creators of the "Hero" long before the start of the production of the tape reported the potential for its continuation (as in the case of Born and Bond), it is likely that we will again see Mashkov as a spy.

Initially, the actor Pavel Priluchny was considered to be the son of Oleg Rodin, but he dropped out of the project. Then Hovhannisyan invited Petrov. The actor, by his own admission, immediately agreed, and then long prepared for work on the project, studying a documentary film about Russian intelligence.