Major Grom (2017 film)

Three armed men, dressed in red sports suits and disguised as villainous hockey players from the popular Soviet cartoon "Puck! Puck!", break into a fictitious "Rosgarantbank" in St Petersburg to rob it. They intimidate visitors and try to find the manager who must have the keys to the bank safe. Unable to find him, the leader of the gang grabs a little girl and threatens to shoot her if the manager does not come to him in a few seconds. As a result, a man appears from the opposite side of the room, claiming to be the manager and wearing the manager's badge on his chest. The leader sends another member of the gang, nicknamed "The Psycho", with the "manager" to the safe. They approach the door, the man looks for the keys and opens it. The bandit first roars in anger, not seeing a mountain of money in front of him, but later finds the money inside a separate depository for cash savings and gold. In the euphoria from a lot of money, the robber begins feverishly putting everything into a cart. After a while, he is trying to have the manager himself help him with carrying the money. "Psycho" approaches him and sharply notices that his face does not coincide with the manager's photo on the badge. Having been exposed, the man attacks the robber and knocks him out.

Nervous because of the long absence of "The Psycho", the "Leader" sends the third member of the gang, "Buster", to see what he is doing. "Buster" finds "Psycho" unconscious on the floor inside the safe room, and tries to bring him to life when the "false manager" appears from the shadows, subduing him. The "manager" comes out of the vault and meets the bank guard, who is very surprised by what is happening. The "manager" introduces himself as major of the Police Igor Grom, and he asks the security guard to not get in the way and wait in a safe place.

The action of the film flashes back to the beginning of the robbery, showing Grom trying to withdraw money from an ATM, which takes away his credit card and goes out of order. While the robbers take visitors hostage and search for a manager, Grom calculates possible options for neutralizing the criminal band, but realizes that an open confrontation with armed robbers will end badly either for himself or for some of the hostages. At this time, he notices the real bank manager creeping out of the shelter and decides to pretend to be him, taking his clothes and badge. After that, the action returns to the present time. "The leader" is trying to hide the panic that arises because of the loss of his comrades. Suddenly, a cart with the disarmed "Psycho" and "Buster" comes up to him, then Major Grom comes out. The furious "Leader" starts to shoot from all the weapons that he has in the direction of the major, but the later manages to hide behind the wall in time near the same ATM he was trying to withdraw money from, which conveniently returns his credit card to Grom. Nevertheless, the robber continues to fire on the bare wall until he runs out of ammunition. In panic, he decides to retreat with the money he has been able to steal. Grom meets another guard, a twin brother of the first one, and asks the twin guards to look after the criminals, while he goes after the "Leader".

While Grom talks to the guard, the "Leader" jumps into a getaway car and tells the driver, another accomplice of the robbery nicknamed "Vodila" (Russian slang for "Driver"), to leave the bank as soon as possible, but he starts to waste time. They drive off just when Grom leaves the bank, but they can not go far away - at the intersection the car is knocked down by a garbage truck. The Driver turns out to be badly wounded, and the "Leader" gets off only with a couple of scratches. He climbs out of the car and runs towards the hotel under construction. Major Grom catches up with the villain, and between them begins a fight, at the end of which the contused Grom loses. While Grom comes to, the criminal runs up the stairs to the top of the building. To shorten the path, Grom climbs onto the statue of Poseidon and jumps from it to the third floor. The pursuit continues and every time the hero overtakes the "leader", the later manages to escape. In the end, however, Grom manages to capture the criminal.

The action is transferred to the news studio, where TV presenter Anna Terebkina tells the audience about the rendered robbers, the capture of which is the merit of Major of the MVD, Igor Grom.

Before the beginning of the credits, a scene is shown showing the Plague Doctor—Major Grom's nemesis from the comic series—lighting a match and throwing it to the ground, after which a bright flame flares up, leading up to the events of the full-length film.

The building of the Saint Petersburg Art and Industry Academy, which was used for the Bank building

The role of Igor Grom was also offered to actor Grigory Dobrygin. In the beginning, the original version approximately ran at 7 minutes, but in the production process it became clear that the script has become too long, increasing the runtime to 25 minutes.

For the fight scenes in the bank a special filming technique was developed, in which filming was done at 360 degree shots, previously not used neither in Russia, nor in the rest of the world. The film takes place in the Rosgarantbank branch, a fictional Bank from the "Major Grom" comic book universe.

The entire interior of the bank was built from the ground up: everything from the racks and cabinets to ATMs, design letterhead and bank cards. The total amount of money made for the film to fill the bank vault exceeded $5 million.

The 5-meter Statue of Poseidon in an abandoned hotel was manufactured and installed specifically for the film. In order to shoot the car chase scenes, the producers blocked the whole block in the city center. Alternative route for public traffic has been developed. Especially for the film, the production team redesigned the look of the Russian police and developed a new, unique service uniform, service cars and equipment.

A prequel comic book called "Major Grom. The Chance" has been published.

The score was written by composer Roman Seliverstov.

To write the music for the film, the composer and the director, Roman Seliverstov and Vladimir Besedin, locked themselves in studio in Staint Petersburg for almost 2 months. All works on the soundtrack for the 25-minute film took 5 months. The orchestra was recorded at Abbey Road Studio One. The composition was the same musicians that worked on the soundtrack for the movies "Lord of the Rings", "Star Wars", "Harry Potter" and many others.

• Official Website
• Major Grom at IMDb