Nikolai, Leviathan's hotheaded main character, sees his life consumed by the fight to save his seashore property from the town's mayor. “I'll kill him if he builds a palace here," shouts Nikolai, in a reference to current Russian leaders' proclivity for erecting garish monuments to their personal splendor: Putin's Italianate palace on the Black sea, for example, allegedly cost more than $1 billion.