But the Russian is merely Death itself, real and non-judgmental. The rubric that controls his character is that anyone he or his assassin interact with dies. Death is an event we all will experience.
Graham murders out of frustration and rage at his loss, not revenge.
Anne is collateral damage in an ongoing battle between Graham and the Russian, a victim. Her case certainly calls for justice.
However, unhinge as I did, ever so slightly who is good and who is evil and the power relations within the narrative deconstruct as the story rolls forward. That process makes for some interesting, challenging storytelling.
Just a warning: this sort of genre twisting will generally limit your audience. I had a very accomplished studio director ask me one time what kind of movies I wanted to make. I said, "intelligent ones." The director laughed at me -- and rightly so. Set ups for dick jokes will win you far more audiences than a 90 minute visual jigsaw puzzle that might take more than one viewing to catch everything going on.
But here's what I know from my own history -- in past films I always stayed within genre boundaries and had many people like my films and I won awards for them and they got me no paid director gigs. I'm now completing a feature where I intentionally unhinged the genre and people are noticing. That doesn't mean I can make a living doing this sort of narrative, but maybe I'll still get to make one every once in a while.
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