"The Factory" is set in a soon-to-be-shuttered factory where the workers violently seize the means of production and kidnap their boss...

A cracking actioner of it's kind that deals and double crosses, defections and late-in-the-game revelations...Director Bykov keeps the tension chiefly psychological until the third act, when he relieves said tension with some exceptionally well-choreographed gunplay...

The crew is a typically mixed bag of different types - an old-timer, a sweet young kid, a potty-mouthed show-off person and so on - who live paycheck to paycheck. Not that they've had one of those for a couple of months, but as is the way in Russia, everyone still shows up and expects they'll get compensated eventually since that's the way it's always been, going back to the days of state-owned means of production...

As the day turns to night, a siege at the factory sets in, elevated by the arrival of a squad of local cops...One by one, men within each unit either turn on their companions or make fatal mistakes and the numbers on both sides continues to tick down...

Technically, this is in every respect a well-oiled factory flick, with Vladimir Ushakov's dramatic, dark-pale cinematography meshing seamlessly with the crisp use of sound and unshowy but effective production and costume design. Altogether, the package straight down to the budget-maximizing use of just a handful of locations and symbolic of light...

if anyone wants to understand why Russian politics are where they are, this is a very good fiction piece. And it is also very true of most do the rest of the world... Apart from some perplexing plot twists that enhance the tension of the narrative, the story is rather straightforward

But this feels rather simplistic - especially when the setting is used as the backdrop for a series of almost epic dialogues on the war between good and evil, which don't do justice to the realism of the concept. Bykov doesn't really show any innovation in the narrative & he doesn't add anything new to a subject...

Overall The Factory is more engaging: during the moments of pure action and when we sense the hourglass is running out of sand, the anxiety is palpable. For a broader audience...

I loved this movie, like all of his previous ones, there is a common dark atmosphere and a raw look into Russian society and mankind in general.

The actors are excelent, the script is brutal and honest, the writing is very good and it will make you think in the end.

It's a movie about man, greed, despair, numbness, lost souls, what's not to love.

The atmosphere is profoundly dark with a medieval exploitation of Russian workers in an outmoded factory in the suburbs of a small industrial town. Unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth and/or suffer from aggravated autism, you should be immediately in empathy with this bunch of no-hopers who rebel mainly because of a lack of choice against the oligarch who informs them, coldly and without any qualm, the impending closure of the factory. The continuation is a modern and military adaptation of Germinal (Émile Zola, 1885).

Moreover, as the society is profoundly changing, this story is probably a harbinger of manifold similarities in the real life, as the ravages of the French « gilets jaunes » which have been world-widely broadcasted.