Overrated


It's a crime soap opera, but for most part its just soap opera. While its engaging and interesting it's forgettable. Thugs in the movie look more like NSYNC boys than thugs.

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Agree

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You guys don't know anything. The big boxer type mobsters are just soliders this is real deal

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Didn't you see the beginning? They started as "big boxer type mobsters" working as racketeers in local bazaar (flea market place). That was kind of ridiculous don't you agree? Pencil necked geek looking boys portraying the tough street wise guys.

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If you don't know anything about russian history, stop talking out of your ass

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I wouldn't say it's overrated. Maybe on occasion they tend to dramatize too much but in general I like it.

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Yes, it has soap opera elements. Yes, it romanticizes some awful people. But it's done damn good.

To the people saying the guys weren't believable as gangsters- are you kidding? Even in American gangster flicks- DeNiro, Pesci, Pacino, any of those guys big? You don't need to be big to be tough (best example- Pesci in Goodfellas). I'm from Eastern Europe as well, and the "new businessmen" in the 90s dressed and acted exactly like that, excellent depiction. what mattered in those years to get into the business were connections and reputation.
Of course, the notions about friendship and brotherhood were not realistic, but it was still done great.

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Brigada is as realistic as it gets. I'm bulgarian, all the things covered in the series happened here after 1989, only on smaller scale, and crime lords here was/are close to untouchable, unlike Russia, when the government still can smash the Oligarchs with iron fist if it choses to (Putin>Hodorkhovsky etc). Such things often drive away western viewers, showing things as they are, without much added glamour. The western viewers may see Brigada as cheap russian rip-off of american gangster genre, because for the most of them the genre is just another type of crime fiction.
While for us, lived or still living in the ex-eastern block, the events in Brigada are painfully familiar.

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it is overrated in a sense of mob members having deep, almost romanticized connections with each other. In reality there was very little high values between gang members - they were betraying and selling each other when the opportunity arrives all the time. If I had to describe this movie, I'd call it gangster soap opera with some nice added action scenes. All in all, an average series

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I feel like all the complaints are coming from non Russians, or people who haven't been exposed to many Russians.

They must be under the impression that all Russians look like Ivan Drago from Rocky 4, so when they see normal looking people like Sasha and Kosmos they think they don't look "tough" enough.

formerly the IMDB user AnneFrankensteinn and obviouslyfake

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