REVIEW: DVD Release: Trackman

Film: Trackman
Year of production: 2007
UK Release date: 16th May 2011
Distributor: Lionsgate
Certificate: 18
Running time: 73 mins
Director: Igor Shavlak
Starring: Tomas Motskus, Dmitriy Orlov, Yuliya Mikhailova, Svetlana Metkina
Genre: Crime/Horror/Thriller
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Russia
Language: Russian

Review by: Robyn Simmons

Fear and money is a potent concoction as a gang of Russian bank robbers find out. The crooks are in for a bloody surprise when their latest endeavour doesn’t meet expectations; whether director Shavlak is more successful, however, is curiously debatable, and Trackman will have audiences divided as much as the film - and the cast - itself.

Leading viewers to believe that they are watching a heist movie, a gang of criminals open Trackman. Led by cool, calm and collected Grom (Dmitriy Orlov) and his less mature but streetwise counterpart, Kostya (Tomas Motskus), their latest endeavour is the obligatory bank job, which literally ends up in the gutter.

Making their getaway courtesy of Moscow’s sewers, they successfully evade the law; however, their next challenge is to dodge the Trackman. Unbeknown to the party, the urban myth that Kostya takes great delight in taunting their female hostages with has an element of truth: the mutant.

With an unvoiced tension already dividing the group, the younger members find their naiveté for once well-placed and they quickly catch on to their sinister admirer. The rational Grom and his companion take more convincing that they’re next on the ‘hit list’ of a disturbed torture, even when Splint, Kostya’s ally and everyone’s ticket to freedom, turns up half-dead and eyeless. Kostya is anxious to heed his friend’s dying words - “get out” - but Splint doesn’t live long enough to expand on minor details such as how. Since he alone held their escape route, his companions are left floundering in a deadly labyrinth…


Trackman, according to Igor Shavlak’s CV, is the film that ended his career and failed to launch that of either scriptwriters - nor was the largely unknown cast done any favours by the title. Evidently, the director’s enthusiasm for film started waning long before the year of his final creation and this, teamed with lack of feature film experience on both his and his writers’ part is all too obvious. A half-hearted experiment of genre seems to be the sole motivation for making Trackman. Opening as a crime caper, the subterranean setting provides the perfect habitat for horror. As with any slasher that sticks to the prescribed formula, crime elements are maintained, with questions of whodunit replacing the former robbery. Formula, in fact, is what Trackman is all about.

Shavlak could well have made the film with a definitive list of rules and conventions glued to his clapperboard. Attention to detail is admirable and he ticks off boxes that many viewers won’t even notice. The voice-over and light-hearted quips, the Gary Oldman-esque Russian criminal, and the flaunting of culture all make an identifiable heist movie. Voyeuristic camera angles, cheap monster outfits and spatters of ketchup all contribute to the archetypal low-budget horror. Shavlak and his writers also manage a commendable job of creating a cast that convincingly accommodates both. Unsurprisingly, though, originality is nonexistent, but aren’t stereotypes a conveniently efficient short-hand? To quickly and effectively convince viewers and establish the film - in this case within genre - clichés are perfect. To quickly and effectively be convinced, clichés are also perfect, but to engage and be engaged, they are as deadly as the monster himself.

The predictable script fails to justify Shavlak’s mix and match attitude to genre, and his dedication to checking off each criterion seems to have drained him and his team of their zeal in other areas. There is nothing particularly clever about what has been done; genres are not so much merged as patched together, and Trackman feels uncomfortably disjointed, rendering the experiment pointless. Not simply a case of fragmentation, the resulting product actually feels like two separate films. Instead of smoothly bridging the gap across genres, Shavlak makes a huge leap. The latter film may be adequately complete in terms of story, but the first remains irritatingly open, desperately needing closure.

What exacerbates the tedium of Trackman is that it cannot be labelled a spoof with any confidence. Just how seriously Shavlak and his team wanted their efforts to be taken is unclear - the stereotypes and clichés are stale and laughable, but whether this was intentional is anyone‘s guess. With ill-placed slow-motion shots, a cheesy soundtrack and iMovie sound effects, it could never be the most respected of films, but it hasn’t been made with enough self-assurance to imply knowing parody. This uncertainty is the only challenging aspect of Trackman - and that surely can’t be intentional.


Perhaps best described as ‘Scream of the sewer’, and not just because of its setting, Trackman is nevertheless a triumph of genre and accessibility. This combination itself is not an easy one, but as an entirety, it fails to satisfy. The Trackman’s prey may have little chance of evading him, but one thing that does is imagination. Ultimately, Trackman is yet another boring addition to the world of low-budget slashers. RS