Grom: Boyhood 2022

In an alternate 1990s version of St. Petersburg, set about twenty years before Major Grom: Plague Doctor, the story unfolds through a memory-rich lens that blends crime, loyalty, and the murky lines between justice and vengeance. A flashforward grips the viewer: the twelve-year-old Igor Grom, Kai Aleks Getts, staggers home bloodied, and the narration begins to recount a decade and a half of perilous days in a city where crime and power tango in the shadows.

The early chapters center on Igor’s father, Konstantin Grom, and their world of hard-edged police work. Konstantin, a seasoned detective, and his partner Fyodor Prokopenko interrogate the lone surviving gangster from a brutal ambush launched by Anubis, the film’s enigmatic villainous force. The suspect resists talking, and Konstantin’s brutal fine line between intimidation and coercion becomes clear, even drawing Fyodor into the moment with a rare show of restraint. The gangster’s silence is tied to a drug that dulls memory and judgment, suggesting a larger web of influence that stretches beyond a single crime.

When Konstantin brings the case to Elena Khmurova, the city’s police chief, the tension widens. Elena, a figure of formal authority, urges him to drop the Anubis investigation and instead devote his attention to his own fractured relationship with his son. The internal tension between duty and family becomes a recurring theme, underscoring how the city’s darkest rumors can carve gaps in even the strongest bonds. Elena’s stance sets the stage for a clash between institutional power and the hidden machinations of the criminal underworld.

Beyond the interrogation room, the story broadens to include Igor’s friendships and the pressures of growing up in a city where danger often arrives with the day’s news. Igor’s friend Ignat and the determined journalist Aleksey Prischurov—Aleksey Prischurov—guide the boys toward a stingier path to money: uncover dirt on the city’s elite, the powerful people rumored to be allied with Anubis. The operation pays off in a tense sequence during a midnight gathering where Konstantin and Smirnov infiltrate undercover, and Prischurov entrusts the kids with a video camera to document what unfolds. The moment Igor recognizes a Zealot of Anubis by a handmark becomes a chilling clue that binds his family to the conspiracy in ways he could never have imagined.

As the night erupts into gunfire, the stain of betrayal and the cost of ambition come into sharp relief. Konstantin fights to protect what he believes is right, but the war he is fighting is fought on a ground that cannot be won with bravado alone. Elena Khmurova reveals herself as the architect of many killings, a ruthless figure who orchestrates a deadly tableaux through a drug-fueled illusion that masks a harsher truth. The confrontation spirals into a brutal sequence in which Smirnov shoots Elena, and Konstantin, cornered and out of ammunition, makes a fateful move that ends with his own death and Igor’s sense of culpability sealing itself into his memory. The film foreshadows the weight of legacy and the consequences that ripple across a lifetime.

Years pass, and the story shifts to adulthood through Igor’s eyes. Now living with his girlfriend Yuliya Pchyolkina, Lyubov Aksyonova, the once-bright boy has become a man haunted by the past. A dream of his father offers a fragile moment of forgiveness and a gentle push toward moving on. The diary he keeps—tucked with tickets to Disneyland and a photograph of his father—reappears as a tangible link to a hopeful future, even as the memory of that fateful night continues to cast a long shadow over Igor’s choices. The invitation to Disneyland, a symbol of shared possibility, becomes a quiet beacon: perhaps some wounds heal with time, companionship, and the willingness to look forward.

The film further adds a layer of clinical distance through the closing scene, which returns to a different kind of confrontation. In a therapeutic setting, Dr. Veniamin Rubinstein, Konstantin Khabenskiy, attempts to coax a hidden subpersonality from Sergei Razumovskiy, a figure who emerges and speaks in a different color of consciousness. Razumovskiy’s eyes shift, the subpersonality growing more defined, and Rubinstein records the progress with clinical curiosity. As Razumovskiy asserts the subpersonality’s intent and readiness to act, the scene hints at a future of inner conflict that mirrors the external battles fought in Igor’s youth, a reminder that danger and trauma can reside inside as much as outside the body.

Filled with brisk period details, tense chases through a city rebuilding after chaos, and a central question about what a family owes to itself and to the people it protects, the film keeps a careful moral balance. It never shies away from the gravity of Konstantin’s decisions, the ethical costs of Prischurov’s methods, or the stubborn hope that the next generation might do better than the last. The characters’ arcs—Igor’s grappling with guilt and responsibility, Elena Khmurova’s unmasking, Smirnov’s ruthless pragmatism, and the older generation’s fallibility—cohere into a portrait of a city that survives by facing its own shadows with a mixture of courage, cunning, and, sometimes, tragedy.

In the end, the story remains anchored by human connections rather than pure investigative triumph. Igor’s relationship with Yuliya becomes the living proof that, even after violence and loss, there is room for tenderness and for choosing a different path. Disneyland tickets and a shared dream of a brighter day stand as a quiet counterpoint to the violence that opened Igor’s life, suggesting that forgiveness and forward movement are possible, even when the past refuses to stay buried. The film closes on a note of cautious hope, even as its final medical-session tableau implies that the struggle with inner darkness is far from over.

Note: For cast details, references to the following actors appear in the first mention of their related characters: Igor Grom Kai Aleks Getts, Yuliya Pchyolkina Lyubov Aksyonova, Konstantin Grom Sergey Marin, Elena Khmurova Irina Rozanova, Yuri Smirnov Daniil Vorobyov, Aleksey Prischurov Oleg Yagodin, Dr. Veniamin Rubinstein Konstantin Khabenskiy, Sergei Razumovskiy Sergey Goroshko.