Movies about an ingenious heist or an elaborately staged robbery always come with set expectations from genre enthusiasts. Can they meet or surpass the gold bar standard set by earlier classics such as John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1955), or Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) for example? Tallinn Pimeduses (English title: City Unplugged, aka Darkness in Tallinn 1993), directed by Estonian filmmaker IIkka Jarvi-Laturi, might not ever attain the iconic status of those efforts but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthy addition to the genre. If anything, it is quirky and original enough to earn a cult following and probably would have if it had ever been distributed and marketed by a major Hollywood studio.
The chances, however, of an indie film from Estonia becoming a cult sensation are pretty slim when you realize that the majority of U.S. moviegoers avoid international films with English subtitles. That may never change but if the same people who loved Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) or F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off (1996) saw City Unplugged, they’d probably enjoy it immensely.
This is one of those cleverly planned out caper movies where the thieves succeed up to a certain point and then all hell breaks loose. The perpetuators are brutal, greedy and completely amoral and innocent people are killed so, unlike the thieves in say, Rififi, you don’t want them to succeed. But what is unusual is that Jarvi-Laturi takes a violent film noir-like set-up and treats it as a giddy black comedy, some of it rendered in the deadpan quality of an Aki Kaurismaki movie (I Hired a Contract Killer, Ariel). This doesn’t mean that the murders or carnage is played for slapstick laughs but the director does take an almost lighthearted approach to the proceedings. The result is a heist film that maintains a genuine tension throughout its duration without ending up as a nihilist bummer. And there is enough offbeat humor and humanistic touches along the way to suspend disbelief in the rollercoaster narrative.
City Unplugged opens with newsreel footage of Estonia from the early 20th century as an offscreen narrator gives context to what we are about to see: “Estonia was independent for 11 years between the world wars before the Nazis invaded it and the Soviet Union annexed it but the invaders couldn’t get to the Baltic nation’s treasury worth $970 million in gold. Luckily it had been hidden away in Paris where it’s been kept for 50 years. When independence was declared on August 20, 1991, it was time to bring the national treasury home to Estonia’s capital Tallinn.” As a result, a huge public celebration with city officials is planned for the homecoming but this event will be used by members of the Russian mafia to steal the gold fortune.
Their plot involves Toivo (Ivo Uukkivi), the night manager of Tallinn’s electric power plant, who has been pressured into being the mob’s inside man by his pregnant wife Maria (Milena Gulbe) because they desperately need the money. His role is to cut off the city’s power during the nighttime celebration as the armored truck from Paris arrives with the gold. A Russian swat team will attack the van, kill the guards and drive the vehicle to the local cigarette factory where the gold will be melted down into cigarette sized molds, packaged up in packs and cartons and smuggled across the border.
The heist proceeds with only a few minor delays (Toivo is almost electrocuted by touching a live cable) and the meltdown at the cigarette factory begins. Then complications ensue starting with Maria going into labor and Terje (Monika Mager), a tomboy and friend of the married couple, rushing Maria to the hospital in a wheelbarrow. Tensions start to escalate between the members of the Russian mob over personal grudges and the city goes into panic mood with looters running wild in the darkness.
To reveal any more would spoil the crazy twists and turns to the final payoff but what is particularly interesting about this genre exercise are the slyly observed interactions and culture clash moments between the Estonians and the Russians (Putin would definitely love to reclaim Estonia as Russian property). City Unplugged is also greatly aided by the frenetic pacing, rapid fire editing, the atmospheric black and white cinematography of Rein Kotov and spot-on performances by a colorful ensemble cast. Ivo Uukkivi as the reluctant hang dog Toivo (he looks a bit like a young Gary Oldman) is particularly winning as he transitions from a mouse into a lion.
Estonia may not be known for its film industry but since their independence in 1991 the country has been turning out an impressive number of movies per year. In fact, the country has been submitting a movie yearly for Oscar consideration for Best International Film. None have made it to the final ballot except for Tangerines, the Oscar nominee for 2014, directed by Zaza Urushadze. A war drama set during the 1992-93 war in Abkhazia, the film lost the Academy Award to the Russian crime drama Leviathan, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev.
When it premiered at various film festivals in Europe, City Unplugged aka Darkness in Tallinn garnered mostly enthusiastic reviews. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) announced it was “#5 on my all time best movies list.” Neil Young, film critic for Jigsaw Lounge wrote, “Darkness In Tallinn was one of the first films made in a former Soviet country to be shown in the west, showing the rough-and-ready atmosphere as ‘new’ countries like Estonia took their halting first independent steps. But this isn’t just a historical curio – Darkness works as an original, blackly comic heist thriller, and while Tallinn hardly lacks photogenic backdrops and historic buildings director Jarvi-Laturi and cinematographer Rein Kotov (the real star of the show) avoid the picture-postcard trap, cranking up the shadily sinister atmosphere in a succession of striking monochrome scenes set in bleakly exotic locations.”
Equally impressed was Clark Collis of Empire Online who said, “Starting off in familiar film noir territory and slowly developing into an almost Cronenbergian vision of social breakdown, the film appears to run the A to Z of filmmaking techniques. Slow motion action. Outrageous close-ups. Speed-freak editing. All are brilliantly utilised as the city of darkness is plunged into an ever more nightmarish circle of death and insanity.”
City Unplugged was the second feature film for director Jarvi-Laturi and he seemed poised for an international breakthrough after the positive reviews he received for the movie. Unfortunately, he died at the premature age of 62 after only completing one more feature, Spy Games aka History is Made at Night (1999) starring Bill Pullman, Irene Jacob and Udo Kier.
City Unplugged was released on DVD by Indiepix in May 2008 and may still be available for purchase through online sellers. You might also be able to stream it with English subtitles on Youtube.
Other links of interest:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5662
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/9367
https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/the-film-comment-podcast-the-films-of-ilkka-jarvi-laturi/
Cinema Sojourns 