Inside 'The Last Ronin': How Max Shishkin Shot a Movie in a 'Non-existent' Genre of Bulletpunk [Exclusive]

The Last Ronin, the feature debut of one of the most promising Russian directors, Max Shishkin, will be available to watch in the US starting September 16.

On the occasion of the digital release, Startefacts sat down with the director. Shishkin explains why his film is not Mad Max and discusses everything from references to Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Aliens to the intricacies of working on action scenes of the highest level.

Startefacts: Many people, especially those who haven't seen The Last Ronin, compare it to Mad Max. Is this a fair comparison?

Max Shishkin: Not every post-apocalyptic movie is Mad Max (1979), but it's clear that any film with even slightly stylized costumes is immediately associated with Mad Max.

To avoid that association, the style probably has to be more exaggerated, like in Fallout (2024) with its blue and yellow outfits. All the other visual codes are associated with Mad Max, and I guess that's okay.

Any movie in a given genre will be compared to the movie that raised that genre to a new level. However, there isn't a single car in the trailer for The Last Ronin. Mad Max is set in a dieselpunk world where gasoline is the main value and everything is tied to the road and car chases.

In The Last Ronin, everyone moves on foot. There is no functioning equipment, except for the main villain's bunker. It only appears in the second half, and we tried to hide it in the trailer. Yes, there are robots – kind of outdated tanks on four legs – but there is basically no other equipment.

I would call The Last Ronin the anti-Mad Max because its rhythm is completely opposite.

George Miller uses sped-up cuts and sometimes speeds up the video sequence in Mad Max. On the contrary, we do everything very slowly because the path through the endless steppes is viscous and endless. When you can't see the edge or where you're going, it creates a feeling of being stuck in a loop, which I really wanted to convey.

Secondly, I wanted to convey a sense of abandonment and the feeling of a small number of people through the emptiness of the frame. The film itself is more of a parable. The Last Ronin is a vicious fairy tale about finding yourself and trying to avoid the evil within.

In general, if Mad Max is dieselpunk, then The Last Ronin can be called bulletpunk – a non-existent genre, but I hope someone will pick up on this and develop it further.

Our cultural code is more aligned with B-movies from the late 80s. Something like Cyborg (1989), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, would most likely fit into that category. It is iconic in Russia because B-movies were treated more seriously there than in the West. This created a cultural code among many boys of the 80s who grew up watching Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone.

The Last Ronin is a film dedicated to this era. Our fathers would go to the library, take tracing paper, and copy fighting techniques from books. Then they would bring them home and copy them into thick notebooks, which covered judo, karate, and kung fu. There is even a similar book in The Last Ronin.

You just talked about this general inspiration from movies of the 80s. Are there any direct references in The Last Ronin?

There are definitely some direct references, but not that many. The movie opens with a stomp on a skull. Terminator 2 (1991) is the movie that inspired many people to become filmmakers and that scene is a love letter to everything I grew up with.

I really like Nicolas Winding Refn's series, Copenhagen Cowboy (2022-2023), in which there's a 360-degree camera spin around a table full of people. I like that scene so much that I found a way to use it at the end of my movie.

There are some funny cultural references to Game of Thrones (2011-2019) in the form of the King. We justify them by the fact that the King is a man who has never seen the surface. He's the third generation of people who live in a bunker. The people who hid in this bunker during a nuclear war had a certain cultural code with them in the form of TV series.

We joked that he had Game of Thrones and the book War and Peace [by Leo Tolstoy], which is why he is woven into this cultural code. The film originated from a joke about what the richest person in a post-apocalyptic world would look like if bullets were the most important currency – he would probably have a crown of bullets.

Another example of a reference is when Ronin goes down in the elevator to save Mariya. This scene was inspired by Ripley's elevator ride, when she's saving Newt in Aliens (1986).

Of course, there's also the training at dawn, which references everything at once. In Kickboxer (1989), Van Damme trained at sunset. Two months before I was offered a chance to shoot a post-apocalyptic film, I was in Thailand, visiting the filming locations of Kickboxer and Mortal Kombat (1995). I was just in this temple and found the spot where Van Damme trained at sunset.

The Last Ronin reminded me of Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch (2011). It also has an eclectic style, features robots, Nazi zombies, and the main character also wields a katana.

It's because Zack Snyder stuffed everything he loves into that movie. He came up with a story that allowed him to use everything he likes. I did pretty much the same thing in The Last Ronin.

I love robots, samurai, dark fashion, and cults. The world of The Last Ronin allows you to incorporate all of those elements. I really wanted to see an action movie where someone has a katana in one hand and a firearm in the other.

For Zack Snyder, this was his fifth or sixth film. I thought that with a debut, I could have so much fun and freedom. The first movie is like a free pass for fun and errors, and wild experiments.

Many viewers have noticed that the clothes of The Last Ronin characters are too clean for a post-apocalyptic setting. Is this a deliberate stylization?

In fact, there aren't many clean clothes, only those of Ronin and Mariya. We see how meticulously Ronin cleans his katana and that he takes off his coat during a fight. I'll tell you more – after spending three months in the steppe with temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius [104°F], we realized that thick black leather can withstand anything.

In fact, I myself would wear black leather clothes during a nuclear apocalypse. Bedouins wear black robes in the desert for a reason: it's the best way to block out ultraviolet light.

The film features a huge number of characters dressed as hobos, as seen in the market scene. It characterizes them. We immediately agreed that we didn't want to see a post-apocalyptic film about hobos – we wanted to make a dark fantasy. When you watch the movie and see its stylization, you understand that Ronin is a pedant – he never even ends up on the floor during a fight.

So, you and creative producer Elza Serova intentionally moved away from genre clichés when designing the costumes?

Elza Serova immediately decided that we wouldn't use the usual brown and gray colors. We wanted to use what we love: black leather. This color is rarely used in a post-apocalyptic, desert setting. Of all the examples, only Priest (2011) comes to mind, and it looks very good there.

Elza and I really like the contrast, we wanted the characters to look as they do in our film. This generally concerned the entire visual code of the film. There is a classic post-apocalyptic look on the market: the color of the canyon. There are more reddish, brown, and gray colors, they are all a kind of local fauna.

But, as Elza puts it, all of our heroes and villains are post-apocalyptic Balenciaga. Elza and I made a conscious choice about fashion. We didn't want to create a world in the usual hobo style – we wanted to create a more stylized world.

For example, in Dune (2021), they approached the costumes and visuals through the Middle Ages. We decided to create post-apocalyptic, dark fantasy fashion. The Chieftain's gang is upcycling, Ronin and Mariya – Balenciaga, the King – Elsa Schiaparelli, and the King's wives – Alexander McQueen.

You already mentioned notebooks with pictures of fighting techniques. Do you think there are any other visual codes or symbols that Western viewers might not understand?

First of all, there are the Kupola [church domes], who are kind of hereditary prisoners. Russian viewers will recognize these domes as the symbols of a Russian prison tattoo. We have always had a strong tradition of using blue tape, even for wrapping Kalashnikov rifles. Then there's the Kalashnikov rifle itself.

There is a scene that everyone will understand, but it was especially obvious in Russia. In the 90s, the Mortal Kombat game was very popular. In the film, there is a scene in which the King stages a fake duel. He gives guns to his wife and Mariya, who stand opposite each other.

This scene is an exact replica of a scene from Mortal Kombat because the King sits on his throne like Shao Kahn. There is electronic music in the style of the Mortal Kombat (1995) movie.

One of the main references, of course, is the iconic corridor fight scene, which has become a staple of popular culture. The corridor fight has been repeated everywhere, from the Daredevil (2015-2018) series to Marvel movies. I love Oldboy (2003), and I made the top shot with the corridor fight in a music video in 2019, which someone thought I took from John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023).

I wanted to recreate the scene from Oldboy, but from a top view, inspired by the game Hotline Miami. Then, before filming The Last Ronin in 2023, I watched John Wick and realized that we wouldn't be the first to show such a scene in a movie.

I also noticed something that Western viewers might not understand – the opening credits with the voice-over.

Yes, exactly! That's the main thing. We invited a translator from the 80s and 90s who dubbed movies. In Russian cinema, we didn't watch films with subtitles, we watched them with voice-over translations.

These were pirated translations. Some guy would record them with poor sound quality and translate them in real time, sometimes distorting the meaning. That's why the beginning of The Last Ronin references that era of VHS an entire generation grew up in.

What about Jean-Claude Van Damme? I heard there were negotiations with him, and he could have been in The Last Ronin, right?

Yes, because the film's producer is friends with him. We translated the script into English for him. He received the script, and there were negotiations. However, it didn't work out because we couldn't afford the amount of money he requested.

However, translating the script into English eventually led us to the Red Sea Film Festival. One of the organizers, Kaleem Aftab, read the script and said they liked it. Because of this festival, a deal was made, and the movie will be shown in the United States.

In a sense, Van Damme led to the possibility of showing The Last Ronin in the States.

It was my dream to make a movie that could be shown in the US. I wrote the dialogue based on Hollywood B-movies from the 80s and 90s. When we watched The Last Ronin at the festival, I read the subtitles, and the dialogue sounded very natural in English – everything worked.

There are three scenes that really impressed me. The first is the dawn training scene, where Ronin is surrounded by a halo of light. The second is the corridor fight scene, where Ronin impales his opponent on his katana, and he slides down it. The third is the scene where the clouds sync perfectly with Ronin's monologue. That wasn't planned, was it?

I'll start from the end. It was the first take. Usually, we do a rehearsal take and then shoot. But I told the guys we were behind schedule and that we should do a rehearsal take. I said they should play it as is because it's a very long, emotionally complex monologue.

We set up the shot and started shooting. I looked at the monitor and a cloud came out. The cloud passed, and it ended exactly when Yuri [Kolokolnikov] finished the monologue. The crew started screaming and jumping. I love this scene.

The katana is my favorite part. When I was in Bangkok this spring, I approached the stuntmen with whom I really wanted to work. I showed them this scene, and when Ronin impales the enemy with the katana and he starts sliding down, they paused, jumped up, started holding their heads, and ran around the monitor screaming that it was a total knockout.

Here, in addition to the stuntmen, Silent Studio did an amazing job with the graphics. The katana looks real, but it's not. That's what makes it look cool.

We spent about an hour and a half on this scene. We removed the roof and part of the wall, and squeezed in with the camera. It was a lot of effort for this shot, but it was a golden idea. I really love the music that our composer, MIMIKO (Dima Konov), wrote for it.

As for the sunrise, we were filming a different scene that day. We were supposed to film it during the first two days of shooting. However, we couldn't catch the sun, so we postponed it. Then we see the sun rising.

I think the third or fourth take made it into the film. The halo that formed around Ronin was also an accident. Several people asked me if it was added in post-production, but no, we were just lucky.

The action scenes in The Last Ronin are pretty impressive, too. I know you respect 87Eleven, the company founded by Chad Stahelski. Were the action scenes based on their work, and how did the actors prepare for them?

I'm a big action fan. I even study martial arts, but not at a very high level – I'm just trying to understand the basics and move on. I have experience with music videos because they also had a lot of long action scenes, which gave me more insight.

I learned a lot from interviews with Gareth Evans, the director of The Raid: Redemption (2011). The experience of 87North Productions, founded by David Leitch, was also helpful. I corresponded with the guys from the Black Flag Group and Keanu Lam, the assistant fight coordinator. They choreographed the action scenes for The Last of Us Season 2 and trained Bella Ramsey.

I also wrote to Felix Betancourt – he is a genius and a rising superstar in Hollywood. There is no one like him. I think he will soon become a real superstar. I corresponded with him quite a bit and watched how he moves with the camera.

I was very lucky with the team. We had Dmitry Kurukin, a cool guy who worked with the camera and focused on the Asian style. Alexander Shein is a fight and stunt coordinator – we both love brutal action scenes like those in Extraction (2020), directed by Sam Hargrave, who is also a former stuntman. We love long takes with fewer unnecessary movements and more brutality.

Unfortunately, this industry is not well-developed in Russia. For example, they had to explain to me how to create overlaps, which is when you choose the right angle so that, when the fist hits, it seems to the viewer that the hit is real.

I taught them my rhythm, how a fight should look. It was a very big stage. There was plenty of experience, as well as creative blessings from my young, cool colleagues.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Last Ronin hits Blu-ray and DVD exclusively through Amazon on September 16. Information about streaming options will be available soon, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, you can watch The Last Ronin trailer.