Kris Kalenov is a Russian police officer, although he could just as easily be any burnout American cop you see in the movies. Drinks to much, scruffy, disrespectful and sloppy in his work, crumbling marriage. You know the drill. He gets handed the case of an abducted child, and this leads down a rabbit hole to a world he not so much left behind as was forcibly ejected from.
Lewis has Kalenov follow the trail as it roams through Russia, New York City, back to Russia, using it as a way to bring him into contact with old friends from his earlier days and fleshing out both the world they're in now and how they got to that point. Drost was a soldier and remained a soldier. Kalenov became a cop, Nikki up there became a local gangster, Nina works as a bodyguard. All of them still in the life in one way or another.
Leon doesn't illustrate any of it as glamorous. The only dramatic shots are the propaganda footage of "The Hammer", Soviet Superman (or maybe Soviet Captain Atom is more accurate.) Kalenov's old exosuit is a clunky looking thing, like a 19th century diving suit or that thing Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens. Everything is about utility, or at least pretending to be useful. All these characters are part of competing attempts by different agencies to be the one who appears to be protecting Mother Russia. Are any of them actually protecting it? Well, Kalenov and Nikki keep ending up in a local McDonald's and Nikki's distributing Pepsi and in a turf war with a guy distributing Coca-Cola, so probably not. They're what's left over after the dog-and-pony shows shuts down.
The cities are grey, the stores half-stocked. It's a long winter. Apartments are crowded and messy, even the offices of the men of power look like the communal living space of a bunch of college kids. Crap all over the place. Things are either falling apart, or already fell apart and are slowly settling into new configurations.
Lewis repeatedly reminds us (as in the page above) this is a Russian story, not an American one. As Alan Rickman once said, John Wayne does not walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly. No tidy happy ending. Kalenov does not get to neatly close the case and become the poet he claims he was meant to be. He does not manage to salvage his marriage. In fact, as far as Winter Men goes, the actual conclusion would have to wait three years.
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