This is where our protagonist, the KGB agent Fiodor Sokolov is dispatched to single-handedly complete the task with which the whole CIA had struggled to no avail, that is – to bring to hill the great and terrible Russian Mafia (that, among the other sins, has the gall to use a top-secret telephone line between the Kremlin and the White House for calling its relatives in Odessa).

Depending on the mood, age and political curiosity of the audience, "Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya" works on several levels.

On the first level, our source of laughter are the fortunes and misfortunes of the resourceful KGB agent, after that – the filmmakers' irony on the whole notion of secret agent as a job, then – about the whole declassification policy which the KGB and the CIA followed during Gorbachev's era (with varying degrees of sincerity) and the way this film exaggerates it to the level of over-the-top slapstick… This is when our laughter suddenly shifts into uneasy musing.

Yet, as in every good comedy, most of the jokes have aged like fine wine.