“Captain Vokonogov Escaped” sounds like your typical war thriller flick, but it reaches for something else instead, and that is interesting in my humble opinion. Following its plain military officer hero’s desperate attempt toward redemption and some peace, the movie dryly but sharply conveys to us the sheer horror and absurdity surrounding him and many other people, and it keeps us engaged even when its story is arriving at its inevitable end point along with its conflicted hero.

Although the movie does not directly specify its period background, it does not take much time for us to gather that the story is set in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, a historically notorious period known for “the Great Terror” in Russia. During this grim and dangerous period, there were several political purges during which thousands of innocent people were promptly executed just because of being labeled as the enemies of the state, and that certainly added more infamy to Joseph Stalin’s ruthless dictatorship during that time.

Captain Volkonogov (Yuri Borisov), a young NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) officer, has simply followed any order along with his colleagues without any question, but now he becomes quite nervous as the ongoing purge begins to affect even his department of the NKVD. When not only he and his colleagues but also the head of their department are on the verge of being purged, the head of their department commits suicide, and that seems to be the only option for Volkonogov and many of his colleagues besides getting “re-evaluated” before eventually being executed.

As trembling more before the growing possibility of his imminent death, Volkonogov attempts to escape, and he soon finds himself chased by a bunch of NKVD agents lead by a weary officer named Major Golovnya (Timofey Tribuntsev). Although he has been quite ill and may not have many years to live, getting executed just like many others is the last thing Golovnya wants right now, and he is certainly ready to catch Volkonogov as soon as possible by any means necessary. At one point, he brutally tortures a close colleague of Volkonogov for getting any useful information, and we are more chilled as several brief flashback scenes show how Volkonogov and his colleagues casually “interrogate” those people unjustly labeled as the enemies of the state.

As he reflects more on how cruel and barbaric he and his colleagues have been to those unfortunate people, Volkonogov’s mind experiences a bit of hallucination at one point when he and several other homeless people happen to be forced to do one atrocious job by NKVD agents, and he becomes convinced that he must do one right thing at least regardless of whether he can escape or not in the end. He happens to have a folder full of government files on some of those executed people, and now he is going to visit their surviving members for getting any kind of forgiveness via telling them what exactly happened to their loved ones.

Of course, many of those surviving members of those documented victims do not welcome Volkonogov or the bad news brought by him. In case of a young female doctor who lost her father, the news of her father’s death is just another depressing thing to be added to her ongoing daily misery, so she accepts the news with phlegmatic detachment. In case of one old man, he turns out to be quite paranoid behind his meek appearance, and we are not so surprised by what he does next right after receiving the news of his son’s death from Volkonogov.

Despite all those negative responses filled with anger, sorrow, and devastation, Volkonogov still does not give up his increasingly despairing quest at all. Really believing that he really needs to be forgiven for his deplorable sin before it is too late, he becomes more willing to take more risk, but he also cannot help but wonder whether his attempt for redemption is futile from the beginning – especially when a certain supporting character flatly reminds him at one point later in the story that nothing will change anyway no matter how much he tries.

Gradually increasing the level of tension around its hero, the movie deftly swings back and forth between stark comedy and absurd horror under the competent direction of directors/co-writers Natalya Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov. For example, there is a strikingly morbid scene where an experienced executioner demonstrates his particular sets of skills in front of Volkonogov and his colleagues, and we are horrified by the executioner’s remorselessly deadpan attitude toward those people to be killed by him one by one.

As the center of the film, Yuri Borisov brings considerable emotional intensity to the screen even when his character does not signal much to us, and he is complemented well by the sardonic weariness of Timofey Tribuntsev. Behind his unflappable determination, Golovnya turns out to have his own fear and conflict, and we understand why Golovnya shows a bit of mercy to Volkonogov around the end of the story.

In conclusion, “Captain Volkonogov Escaped” is a rather tough stuff to watch, but it is still worthwhile to watch for its solid mood, storytelling, and performance. As a sort of horror film, this may actually be scarier than any horror film to come out during the rest of this year, and that says a lot about its considerable effectiveness.