Victor Gromov, once a legend of Moscow’s criminal underworld known under the nickname “Butcher”, has since retired and now spends his days enjoying life on his farm. One day, Victor’s former “colleagues” show up and tell him that he must store the mafia’s common fund in his offshore bank account. Victor has no choice but to help them. Several months later, on the day when he is supposed to give the money back, Victor gets hit on the head by a falling billboard. As a result, he forgets the password to his bank account. Fleeing for his life from his former cronies, Victor decides to hide in a freight train’s boxcar but ends up getting locked inside. The train departs, and several days later he finds himself thousands of kilometers away from Moscow, in a small northern town called Polyarny, which, as it turns out, is not so easy to get out of...

A teenage soldier in World War I—a simple village boy with a naive youthful dream of fame and medals—throws himself into the unknown and goes blind in the first battle, thus taking on a new job: intercepting enemy planes by listening to the air through huge metal funnels.