Flesh.ka (2006) Online
Contemporary Russia. This is a criminal thriller set in the world of the new generation of thirty-something, white-collar workers of modern corporate Russia, a world in which everyone pursues money and power in complete submission to the corporate culture of greed, lies, and treachery. The story opens as Andrey, a low-ranking executive at a large bank, is instructed to take a "fleshka", a small, memory flashcard, home to his wife. Andrey's wife, Viktoriya, is his superior at the bank, a position she got after cruelly accusing him of professional incompetence. She is a career woman: cold, calculating, ruthless, and uncompromising, driven by nothing but her lust for money and power, and the things they can get her. The flashcard contains all the hidden accounts where the illegal profits from the bank's many nefarious activities have been deposited. The net worth of this information is over 320 million dollars. Andrey comes home, earlier than usual, where he finds Viktoriya in the arms ...
| Credited cast: | |||
 | Ilya Shakunov | - | Andrey |
 | Evgeniy Stychkin | - | Igor |
 | Ekaterina Guseva | - | Viktoriya, Andrey's wife |
| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
 | Andrey Tashkov | - | Aleksey, Andrey's friend |
Director Georgiy Shengeliya specifically cast Evgeniy Stychkin and Ekaterina Guseva in roles that are atypical for them. Yevgeni, who usually plays popular heroes, often underdogs, has been cast as an anti-hero, an arrogant and cunning careerist. While Yekaterina, whose usual roles are sympathetic and romantic heroines, plays a ruthless and cold-hearted career woman.
The small village of Fedotovo consists of, at most, 15 dachas - summer cottages - spread along a few unpaved roads on a bank of the Unzha River. Director Georgiy Shengeliya once visited a friend there, and marveling at its serene, natural beauty, he promised he would return someday to make a film. He kept his promise.
A fight scene in the dance pavilion in Fedotovo was done using local youths. The fight stunt director, Dmitriy Tarasenko, gave them one day of training in the proper safety and techniques of stunt fighting. When the actual filming began, and director Georgiy Shengeliya yelled "Motor! (Action!)", the fighting was so realistic that the entire film crew thought that a real fight had broken out, stopped the camera, and rushed into the fray to break it up. Perplexed, the local youths assured them that they had not been fighting; they had simply been doing what they'd been taught. The scene does not appear in the final cut.
The center-city Moscow penthouse used as the home of the characters Andrey and Viktoriya is worth more than 3 million dollars.
The spectacular accident scene in Moscow's Third Traffic Circle is one of the most elaborate and expensive action sequences filmed in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It took over two weeks to prepare. Three cars were equipped with internal catapults which launched them into the air on cue. The scene was filmed from five different positions: four fixed, and one moving. To hold the moving camera, a special car was made, outfitted with full roll-cage, an internal fire-fighting system, and a powerful V8-engine. In all, over 20 cars were totaled or damaged.