The film is full of vivid pictures of spy and terrorist games in Moscow, modern Gulag in the Far North, gold mines, escape with elite spetsnaz in the pursuit, underground community of permanently high punks, and other quite unusual settings.

One was introduced by Varlam Shalamov in his tales about Gulag, and it was called "calf" – a younger convict accepted to escape team for food, as a walking piece of meat.

The film was shot in Crimea, Ukraine, where director Egor Konchalovsky had found locations for shootings of Siberian taiga, Ural mines and Moscow streets.

Igor Davidov, an international journalist, possesses dangerous information about high-ranking traitors, including an army general, a State Duma elected official and a well-known nuclear scientist who plan to sell weapons-grade uranium to a Middle East country.

The villainous General Astrahantsev kidnaps the children of loyal Commander Usoltsev, a veteran of the Chechnya war; the nuclear scientist is murdered.