Centaur (2023 film)

Centaur (Кентавр) is a Russian road movie directed by Kirill Kemnits, it stars Yuri Borisov and Anastasia Talyzina, also in the cast are Sergei Gilev and Grigory Vernik. It was theatrically released on July 13, 2023.

Plot
April night in Moscow. A young taxi driver named Sasha, who always works at night, leaves for his shift, greeting a traffic inspector he knows at his post along the way. Sasha prefers to work at night, because at night it is “harder to pretend”, he also likes to determine by the appearance of the client what he is “really”. The man with the suitcase for business trips, whom Sasha picks up from the hotel, he immediately identifies as a person who is cheating on his wife with his mistress. Sasha, who got into the car without an order, asks the young man “major” a question about what is the current situation with cryptocurrency; when the young man leaves, Sasha discovers that he forgot his lighter. Sasha's next client is a young escort girl, Liza. He gives her a ride to the next client, while Lisa asks Sasha to open the door for her. When the taxi driver does this, the girl notices that he has difficulty walking. Sasha admits that he is disabled, but tells different versions of why it happened - because of an accident at a motorcycle race, because of a bullet that hit the spine ...

Liza asks Sasha to take her to different addresses throughout the night, for which she promises to pay him generously. While waiting for Liza at a rich mansion, Sasha sees a woman smoking on the balcony, and then almost leaves without Liza, being frightened by a frightening-looking man who spoke to him. The trip continues, and at some point Liza, bending over, sees a mobile phone with traces of blood on the floor of the car. After saying that she needs to give the money to the manager, Liza gets out of the car and goes around the corner, where she gets into the car with two men. One of them, threatening her, says that she should continue to ride with Sasha, because they need to collect evidence of his guilt - he is the main suspect in the murder of several escorts recently, since all the places where their bodies were found coincided with places where Sasha went. Liza says that she is afraid, but the man rudely reminds her that he is trying for her sake, because they found drugs on her, and her case will not be allowed to proceed unless she plays her role to the end ...

Cast

 * Yuri Borisov as Sasha, a cab driver
 * Anastasia Talyzina as Liza
 * Sergei Gilev as Kovalev
 * Grigory Vernik as major, a taxi passenger
 * Kseniya Kutepova as major's mother
 * Ivan Mamonov as mother's bodyguard
 * Kirill Melekhov as Kovalev's partner
 * Oleg Evteev as a traffic inspector
 * Timofei Fyodorov as a taxi passenger

Production
The project was presented as part of the full-time defense of copyright and experimental films for support by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in 2022. The creators of the tape plan to spend about 110 million rubles on production, 50 million of which they want to receive as part of state support for domestic cinema.

Marketing
The first teaser trailer of Centaur was released on April 28, 2023.

Critical response
The film received mixed reviews. Many critics have pointed to the external resemblance of Centaur with Taxi Driver (1976 film) by Martin Scorsese and Drive (2011 film) by Nicolas Winding Refn.