Siberia

Keanu Reeves plays Lucas Hill, who's come to St. Petersburg so he and his partner can sell some blue diamonds to a Russian for a lot of money. Except his partner has vanished, there are men looking for Pyotr, and Lucas has no hint of where the diamonds are. He does have a hint of where Pyotr went: Myrna, and while he's there, he meets a cafe owner named Christa (Ashley St. George).

Christa was drawn back to where she grew up to run the family cafe after the abrupt deaths of her parents. Her brother is trying to set her up with some guy named Anton, who is supposedly fine, but is a representation of this life running a cafe and dealing with drunk mine workers exposing themselves to her. Lucas is the world she escaped to, and to which she wants to reach again.

As for Lucas? I think he's just bored of his wife. He says something about how, after a while with someone, you squint at them and miss all kinds of flaws. It would seem that it doesn't take long, because Christa seemed to ignore Lucas' flaws right off. She seems to expect he's going to be more open with her than with his wife, and he's not. That he isn't going to ultimately be focused on trying to get himself out of the mess Pyotr has gotten him into.

There's a whole metaphor with the diamonds. Lucas says he likes them because they're beautiful and rare and valuable, but as Christa notes, they also can't be altered, and she's starting to realize maybe Lucas can't, either. Of course, then there's the whole plot thread with the fake diamonds, which have to be subjected to some kind of spectroscopic analysis to detect. So they look just like the real thing, but they're phony. Which I assume means they can be altered, but also that they aren't really rare or beautiful. Is that what Lucas's, whatever, with Christa is? It looks like some great, chance romance, but it's a short-lived thing doomed to destruction.

That's more words than I intended to spend on all that. The problem is, I wanted more on the business with Pyotr being missing and the diamonds. The mysterious Samsonov and the FSB guys who were sniffing around. I envisioned Lucas roaming the streets and back alleys of St. Petersburg at night, or being pursued across open ground around Myrna. The movie is much more interested in Lucas and Christa's love affair, but I don't care about him sleeping with some lady he met because he and his wife are bored with each other.