[...]It is 1946 in Odessa and the traces of the Great Patriotic War are everywhere. Crime, which got out of hand during the war, is still at a record high and the newly appointed (or exiled) head of the Odessa Military Region, Marshal Zhukov (Vladimir Men'shov), is “greeted” with a railroad explosion. The head of the Department for Fighting Banditism, lieutenant colonel David Markovich Gotsman (Vladimir Mashkov) has his hands full. More bad news awaits him and his investigative brigade as they discover a hidden stockpile of weapons and Soviet uniforms stolen from a military warehouse. The clues take Gotsman through a chain of thieves, counterfeiters, and cardsharpers, to a certain Chekan (Konstantin Lavronenko) who commits these crimes wearing a captain's uniform. The chain-smoking Gotsman never eats or sleeps. He is street-smart and respected both by the law-abiding citizens and by seasoned criminals. He also loves Odessa, his rowdy Jewish neighbors (Svetlana Kriuchkova and Aleksandr Semchev), and his two buddies: Fima-the-half-Jew (Sergei Makovetskii), a former thief—now an amateur detective—and Mark (Aleksei Kirichenko), whose war-time head injury has left him an invalid. [...]
Elena Prokhorova, kinokultura.com
