The Needle (Игла, Igla) is a 1988 Soviet film directed by Rashid Nugmanov, starring the iconic Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, leader of the band Kino. Tsoi plays the enigmatic drifter "Moro", who comes to Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, to extract a debt from his old buddy "Spartak". He decides to pay a visit to his ex-girlfriend Dina, who recently became a morphine addict. Moro takes her to the Aral Sea, where she begins to recover. But when they return to Alma-Ata, the drug dealers try to ensnare them with morphine. So Moro confronts their leader, the doctor Artur, who tries to kill our hero. The film has since become most famous for its soundtrack (written by Tsoi), and many Tsoi/Kino fans have a strong Nostalgia Filter for it.
The film was re-released in 2010 as The Needle Remix. Remix adds some new scenes and expands on the plot of the film, as well as featuring a lot of well-received music composed for the film. Some of the new music was composed by U-Piter, a band consisting notably of famous Soviet-Russian rock musician Vyacheslav Butusov and ex-Kino guitarist Yuri Kasparyan (who also composed some of the original music from way back in 1988). However, it was controversial for some of its changes to the plot, such as Spartak's new fate.
In 2019, the original film was re-released in high resolution and shown in cinemas.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Artur. He seems like a respectable doctor at first, but it turns out that he's in charge of morphine trafficking in the city.
- The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Artur.
- All Just a Dream: The whole Aral episode is possibly this. Maybe.
- Ambiguous Ending: On purpose. In the end, Moro gets stabbed and slowly walks away into the snowy park. It is unknown whether he stays alive or bleeds out afterward. Averted in Remix, where Moro survives and makes it home off-screen to his family.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: In the final acts of the film Moro takes over Spartak's goons with not much difficulty. Justified, as Spartak has proved himself as a mentally unstable coward while Moro showed that he can get things done, so it didn't take much convincing for them to switch to a new leader.
- Bald of Evil: Artur, especially in the new scenes from Remix where he is very noticeably older and balder.
- Battle Discretion Shot: Moro rescuing Spartak from hostile goons happens entirely off-screen. Another episode has Moro fight off some street thugs, which is shown through some quick cuts that paint the fight in Broad Strokes rather than as a detailed scene.
- The Cast Show Off: Viktor Tsoi was a fan of Bruce Lee and practiced martial arts in real life, and he gets to show off some of his moves during a couple of scenes.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The man in a hat, briefly seen throughout the film. He stabs Moro in the ending.
- Cool Shades: Originally Spartak's, they only become cool once Moro pilfers them from him.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Tsoi as Moro wears pure black outfits, similar to what he wore in real life.
- Deadly Doctor: Artur.
- Dirty Coward: Spartak. He hides from Moro when he comes to get money from him, later has to be bailed from other goons by Moro (with Moro doing all the work while Spartak just lets himself be taken away and beaten up), and later still hides in an abandoned zoo, relying on his goons to bring him food.
- Downer Ending The film ends with Moro getting stabbed and slowly walking away into the dark, snowy path, leaving his ultimate fate ambiguous. Subverted in Remix, where Moro survives the stabbing and makes it home off-screen.
- Drugs Are Bad: The whole premise behind Moro and Dina's relationship. While drugs were a small problem in the USSR (especially when compared to the USA), Rashid Nugmanov chose to focus on this issue as it wasn't commonly addressed in the censored Soviet media of the time.
- Enemy Eats Your Lunch: More like "Enemy Extinguishes Cigarettes In Your Pepsi", but the spirit is the same.
- Faux Symbolism: Deliberately invoked. The film features many strange and bizarre scenes or actions from its characters that look like they could hold some symbolic or allegorical meaning, but according to the director he didn't have any specific meaning in mind behind those elements, leaving those up to viewers' interpretation.
- Flipping the Bird: Moro to a train attendant at the beginning, when she threatens to take him to the authorities for riding without fair. Moro just flips her off without saying anything and leaves.
- Going Cold Turkey: Dina at the Aral. She immediately falls off the wagon after they return.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Spartak in Remix, where he gets his head chopped off by a woman he held captive in a bomb shelter bunker for years as a breeding mate in case of a nuclear holocaust. It's pretty clear why this is one of the more controversial additions of Remix.
- Invincible Hero: Averted with Moro. He's the biggest badass in the film but he's still not a One-Man Army and has his limits. He gets a few hits in and has his face lacerated when he has to defend himself against the thugs, and according to a deleted scene he only wins that fight because Spartak's goons come to his aid.
- Leader Wannabe: Spartak to his gang of goons. He's very bad at it on account of him seemingly lacking any spine.
- The Man Behind the Man: The man in a hat is implied to be one for Artur, possibly being above him in the drug trade.
- Never My Fault: In his final speech Spartak chews out his goons for how they failed his expectations and no longer deserve to follow him. They just leave him to rant and follow Moro instead.
- Non-Actor Vehicle: For Viktor Tsoi, who was a musician and only had one cameo part in one film before.
- No Name Given: Moro is only a nickname, and the real name of the hero is never revealed. Spartak's goons aren't even given nicknames.
- Old Flame: Dina to Moro.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Dina seems completely unfazed by Moro showing up at the shooting range - but once he leaves we see that when she was hitting bullseye before now she barely hits the target at all. Moro is also uncharacteristically crude and emotional when he asks Dina if she sleeps with Artur.
- Saharan Shipwreck: While he and Dina are looking for the beach, Moro finds a deserted ship, the Gidrolog (meaning Hydrologist) that he climbs on top of. Due to the rapid draining of the Aral Sea, it is now a completely empty desert, with the occasional rusted wreck serving as a last reminder of what was only decades ago.
- Shell Game: One of Spartak's goons plays one with Moro in the restaurant episode, where he covers a small bead with opaque glasses and after shuffling lets Moro guess which glass hides the bead. Moro deliberately picks the "wrong" one from the one he was supposed to pick, showing to the goon that he knows the trick of the game (the bead is actually hidden between the goon's fingers and not under any of the glasses) and with that proving his street cred to him.
- Snow Means Death: It starts to snow in the final scene, and Moro gets (possibly) fatally stabbed.
- The Stoic: Moro does not emote much, for the most part maintaining a laidback and unflappable attitude.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Dina. She appears very reserved and distand with Moro, but it is implied that some feelings still linger beneath that facade. It is also implied that at least a part of the reason behind her emotional distance is the burn-out from drugs.
- There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: "...the ones who sit on pipes and the ones who need money."
- Thirsty Desert: The Aral Sea is famous for having almost completely drained in only a few decades. Dina mentions that she and Moro have been to the Aral a few years ago. However, when they arrive again, they decide to go for a swim, only to find that the sea is nowhere to be found.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Dina says that Artur is a good man, that he helped her when she was new to the city and lonely. But then he introduced her to morphine. Eventually, she became an addict and Artur used her apartment to store the goods.
- Walk It Off: At the end, where Moro gets stabbed and walks off into the never-ending snowy path.
