The Criminal Quartet 1990

In May 1989, four friends who grew up together in an orphanage—Semen Portnov ‘Portnoi’ [Vladimir Steklov], investigator; Marat Mukhanov [Nikolai Karachentsov], police officer; Pyotr Saraev ‘Sarai’ [Boris Shcherbakov], police officer; and Nikolai Larin [Vladimir Eryomin], journalist—are pulled into a perilous mission when Portnov’s eight-year-old son, Anton, is kidnapped.

Portnov has recently uncovered a major fraud at a local shoe factory, where shipments of defective shoes were being hidden behind a sealed-off warehouse. The factory’s leadership fights back with a brutal twist: they abduct Anton and demand that Portnov remove the warehouse’s security in exchange for his son’s safety. With a race against time and no guarantees, Portnov reaches out to his old comrades for help.

Mukhanov skillfully engineers a plan to buy precious hours by rerouting a train car loaded with the defective goods, buying the investigators and their allies a window to push forward. Saraev uses intimidation to pressure an accomplice of the factory bosses into revealing inside information, while Larin takes a dangerous public route by publishing an article on the substandard shoes to lure the criminals into the open—an act that puts him at risk when he’s kidnapped and later released.

The quartet follows a trail of clues that leads to a tense, multi-pronged pursuit. Larin’s memory of Beatles songs from his time in captivity becomes a surprising clue that helps them pinpoint the hiding place of the factory heads: a pool where the criminals lie in wait. A further reveal comes when a captor admits that Anton is being held near the city’s water treatment plant, and that gang members are already moving to intercept the diverted train car.

Mukhanov keeps the plan intact by ordering the guards at the rail yard to stand their ground without exposing their police identities, while the four friends close in on the criminals in a brutal confrontation at the treatment plant. Portnov sustains injuries, but the team prevails. Mukhanov then negotiates with Uncle Lyova to secure safe passage for their escape, turning the tide in their favor. In the meantime, police seize the remaining gang members at the rail yard, tightening the net around the crime ring.

The story closes with mock-documentary captions that reveal the fates of the central players and the downfall of the corrupt shoe factory, underscoring how a tale rooted in loyalty, courage, and teamwork brought a dangerous plot to light and rescued a child, even as the criminal enterprise crumbles under the weight of its own misconduct.