We all know the situation in Ukraine at the moment, but while it is only coming out here now, this film pre-dates the war, having been released at home on Christmas Eve, 2020. Given that, and the fact that I have no real knowledge of Ukrainian politics beyond the fact that there is a war going on, I am not going to attempt to frame Once Upon a Time in Ukraine through that lens. Well, that’s one reason. The other reason I’m not going to attempt to frame the film through contemporary politics is that while I’m sure those allusions exist within it, they aren’t needed to appreciate it.
Taras Shevchenko (played here by Roman Lutskyi) was a real historical figure; a writer, artist and poet whose work, a little reading suggests, is considered foundational to modern Ukrainian literature. The film, however, imagines him as a serf who, in his attempt to rescue his girlfriend from a sadistic landowner, teams up with a half Japanese half Ukrainian samurai named Akayo (Sergey Strelnikov) who is seeking revenge on a slave trader named Harimoto (Gen Seto) who killed his master and stole his sword.
The main influence on writer/director Roman Perfilyev seems not to be 19th century Ukrainian history and literature, but Quentin Tarantino. The film grabs ideas, if not specific images, from several of Tarantino’s imagined histories as well as Kill Bill. The most obvious of the models is Django Unchained, with Taras largely filling the Django role, but Akayo as much more of a mentor, teaching the poet to become a samurai (in two days, so, as he notes, progress is limited). Akayo’s story also shows the influence of a whole slew of martial arts classics the ‘you killed my master, now die’ story is one of the old standbys of martial arts and samurai cinema, and Perfilyev doesn’t really innovate within it, but he knows his references and has fun remixing them.
Tarantino is clearly one of the master craftsmen of cinema but, by his own admission, he steals and repurposes ideas all the time, so taking liberal inspiration from him is fair game. It’s fair to say that Roman Perfilyev currently has neither the budget nor quite the skill to hit the same heights that Tarantino is capable of. The cracks show most early on. We’re launched straight into following Akayo and his men on the run from a gang of ninjas (because of course there are also ninjas in this movie). It’s not a bad sequence, but I wonder if it might have been shot early in the schedule, because there are quite a lot of very visibly missed punches and kicks that nevertheless send people flying—the film also never quite gets a handle on how realistic its action should be, with occasional moments out of a wuxia film mixed with more grounded violence. However, after this opening, the choreography, even when it’s not quite sure what it’s going for, is well executed.
It’s always hard to evaluate acting when you aren’t familiar with the language being spoken, but Luskyi and Strelnikov (I can’t find any reference to him being, as his character is, half Japanese) build a solid relationship as the mismatched buddies who end up trusting each other due to circumstance and there is a fairly striking performance from the woman playing Harimoto’s translator (neither imdb nor the press materials give her name), who has a creepy insidious character and a natural presence that could have been developed further. Most of the acting aside from the two leads reads a little cartoony, but that works for the film.
Once Upon a Time in Ukraine isn’t a masterpiece. As mush as I’m sure he’d like it to, it ddoesn’t announce Roman Perfilyev as the next Tarantino, but it’s never less than fun. For a UK audience, I don’t know that there’s a lot of depth here, but even as you tick off all the allusions (oh, that’s definitely nabbing a little from The Wild Bunch), it’s tough not to be engaged with the characters and caught up in the action sequences. At 90 minutes, it’s a fun time.
