Synopsis
The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment (Ворошиловский стрелок, 1999) is a Russian crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Ivan Fyodorovich, a retired railway worker, lives quietly with his granddaughter Katya in a small provincial town. Three idle, well-fed young men from the next courtyard lure the girl inside and rape her. What follows isn't a revenge fantasy so much as a story about justice that the law refuses to deliver.
The attackers are arrested — then the father of one of them turns out to be a senior police official, and the case quietly falls apart. Prosecutors shrug, the investigator looks away, and the rapists stroll the same yard as if nothing happened. So the old man takes down a rifle. Mikhail Ulyanov carries the whole film almost wordlessly, his face doing the work of a monologue, backed by Aleksandr Porokhovshchikov, Sergei Garmash and a young Vladislav Galkin and Marat Basharov.
Director Stanislav Govorukhin shot this at the breaking point between eras, when millions had lost any faith in the state, and he hit the nerve dead center: audiences sided with the grandfather even as the law stood against him. Hard, uncomfortable filmmaking that argues with itself and hands you no easy verdict. For anyone drawn to 1990s Russian crime cinema, this is one of its cornerstones. Stream The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment (1999) online on iFILM.
Starring
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