After years and years of Russian films, I am used to expect stories deeper and richer than this. The wonderful interpretation shown by the child actor can't erase the poverty of the film as a whole. The film is the story of a six-year-old child, who's never seen his dead-in-war father, so that the only paternal images he has got are fleeting glimpses, courtesy of his childish fantasy. Looks like the child is the representation of the Russian people, wishing for a change to come and having to face the reality that the realization of your wishes not always results in the concrete the way you expected. The thief enters the child's life abruptly, treating him rudely, teaching him how to live by the muscle and showing interest only in the private parts (how right...) of the mother and in the valuables of the homes giving them hospitality in between their non-stop escaping from town to town, from train to train, from one burglary to the next one. The child is a masterwork of tenderness and shows a great acting capability, expressive in a way that Di Caprio shall never be able to equal in 40 more years of movie appearances. Along the way, though fascinated he shall never find a way neither to trust nor to comprehend that strange chap, so intrusive in his so far perfect mother-child relationship (mother herself is a psychiatric case for her loving a man, who's rather rough both to her and her child and who's not actually an example the kid should be shown), but shall surprise his own self (or maybe it was the underlying wish to see his mother smiling again) by calling him 'dad', while chasing the jeep carrying the thief ('twas time) and his peers to jail. Because of this betrayal, visions of his "real" father shall abruptly come to an end, mother shall die in a few days and his life shall continue in an orphanotrophy. The meeting with the thief years later shall take the now grown-up boy to the extreme consequences, using the gun that the thief had left him against the outlaw himself, who had shown a very short memory of the teen's mother and teased him about it.
