An angelic-looking but selfish and ruthless young man wanders from crime to crime without the slightest remorse. In the Russian film "Satan," the devil is a delicately handsome young man whose murderous opportunism is too easy to understand. While the film registers shock at its protagonist's absolute amorality, it also presents him as part of a bitterly divided and pessimistic culture. The world of "Satan" is one in which nothing really works, and therefore anything goes.

​Young soldiers in the Soviet Internal Troops are subjected to systematic abuse during their dedovshchina (hazing). The plot unfolds primarily aboard a prisoner transport rail car guarded by a unit of paramilitary conscripts.