A Film a Week - Moor / Mavr

 previously published on Cineuropa

Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov is back with his third movie this year. After the IFFR-premiered Steppenwolf and Cadet, which bowed at Tokyo, he has presented his newest work, Moor, to the global audience in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s Critics’ Picks competition. This kind of production tempo might seem too manic or “serial” for many, but it is something that Yerzhanov often does as part of his very intuitive approach that combines social realism with genre filmmaking. He realises his films through a cast comprising newcomers and more seasoned actors, and sprinkles them with references stemming from his own cinephilia.

With Moor, however, things might seem to be different, since Yerzhanov does not set the plot in the village of Karatas or the milieu of semi-silly small-time corruption. This time, we go to a big city replete with big-time corruption, garnished with references to US action movies and touching on the politically sensitive topics of Soviet and Russian wars abroad.

The first thing we learn about the protagonist, Beibaris Kumanov, aka Moor, comes from the title card informing us that he was in the combat zone in 2023 and that he deserted during rehabilitation. Against the backdrop of the synth-heavy, pulsating score by Sandro di Stefano, Yerzhanov shows us the protagonist (Berik Aitzhanov) in a therapy room with fellow veterans of different wars, who open up to the therapist. But not him – not now and not for the rest of the film – as he is so damaged from all the killings he has perpetrated that a ghost with a black face follows him around.

The path leads him back to his home country of Kazakhstan and the unnamed metropolis where his brother, nicknamed Houdini, used to live. Living up to his nickname, the brother disappeared after he got in debt with a powerful mobster (Zhandos Aibasov), who is always clad in a snakeskin jacket and who even holds sway over the police. Disregarding the danger, Moor goes to help his red-headed sister-in-law Maria (Anna Starchenko) and nephew Tom (Insar Romankov). Moor has the power of a one-man army, but his wounds prevent him from killing more people. However, this does not mean that he cannot hurt them badly.

Moor is a gem of genre cinema, carefully written and masterfully directed by Yerzhanov, who always seems to find the perfect trick, handsomely shot by Yerkinbek Ptyraliev and punchily edited by Arif Tleuzhanov. Although it is the filmmaker’s first almost completely urban-set action-thriller, Yerzhanov seems to be more at home than ever, finding the perfect nuance between neon-lit slickness and B-movie dirtiness. He also squeezes fitting performances out of all of the actors – Yerzhanov’s regular, Berik Aitzhanov, has an even more complex task than his colleagues, since his means of expression quite limited by the fact that his character never speaks, but he manages to give a great performance nonetheless through micro-gestures.

What makes Moor an especially pleasant viewing experience is the dense network of references that Yerzhanov has managed to weave into the film’s fabric. Basically, it is a story of the “Kazakh Rambo” in a typical B-movie setting, but the filmmaker has enriched it with clever nods to older and newer true masters, such as John Milius, Walter Hill, Nicolas Winding Refn, Takashi Miike and others. This is exactly the type of movie we often miss both at festivals and on the cinema listings, and represents a new stage in Yerzhanov’s already impressive career.