Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses

Dir: Aki Kaurismäki

1994

*****

I absolutely adored Aki Kaurismaki’s 1989 film LeningradCowboys Go America but it was one of the rare films that I would argue didn't need a sequel. However, I'm so glad he made one. Just as you thought the Leningrad Cowboy’s story couldn't get any more surreal, it does, and then some. It could never have the same impact of the first film, so the change in direction was cleverly though out and I would say it's probably funnier. The character of Moses, played by the late great Matti Pellonpää, is inspired. Half the band die of tequila poisoning, Siberia becomes "the Promised Land" and the Statue of Liberty gets her nose stolen. If that's not great writing, I don't know what is. After the events of the first film, the band (now a real band and not just a fictional one), have been enjoying success in Mexico. Enjoying success a little too much in some cases, as half the bad have become tequila alcoholics and half of them have died of excessive drinking. The rest have become fully fledged Mexicans, represented by the fact they have all grown moustaches and wear Ponchos (but still have their pompadours and winklepickers of course). Destitute and down on their luck, the band suddenly receives a telegram requesting their presence at a gig in Coney Island, New York. Igor, now their road manager, smuggles them across the border and gets them to New York, where they discover the sender of the telegram is none other than their ex-manager Vladimir (once again played by the brilliant Matti Pellonpää). Since Vladimir abandoned the band in Mexico at the end of the last film, he had gone through the experience of being re-born and now goes by the name Moses. He explains to them that, for purposes that are to be explained later, they must travel back to the Promised Land (Siberia). They agree and they board a boat back to Europe, just after Moses steals the Statue of Liberty’s nose as a souvenir. Instead of taking the boat, Moses stows away on the wing of a plane which he promptly falls off mid-flight and lands in the sea. He is reunited with the band as he is washed up at precisely the same time and place as their boat is harboured. Meanwhile, a CIA agent has learned of the missing nose and it hot on Moses’s tail. When the band is met by old friends from Serbia, they all take a bus to Brest to play the first of a few gigs in order to make money for travel. The CIA agent soon catches up with them and poses as a record producer but is soon found out and held prisoner by the band. They stop at Frankfurt, Leipzig, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia and find out their quest has something to do with the birth of a sacred calf but it’s a ridiculous ruse. Eventually the CIA agent also becomes born again and the bad live happily ever after in Siberia, where, people have warmed to them since their departure. There is always a fear that the sequel will tar a memory but not here. Everything that made the original film great is matched and bettered. One wonders whether they might have had another film in them, rather than Total Balalaika Show which is a concert movie. It’s a nonsensical masterpiece with music, my kind of silly and just about the coolest comedy ever made.