First off, after watching this flick and wanting the time back to do something productive with it, I decided to check out reviews knowing how polarized they and the up/down votes would be. I wasn't disappointed. Some single-review users are even begging the FBI (the American Stasi) to investigate and charge anyone who leaves the movie a bad review, as if all of us are in the US and subject to its laws (I guess Julian Assange would have something to say there).
The film is just a terrible biopic with all the usual western narrative infused background information on V V Putin's life, his career in the Soviet version of the FBI (no, not quite their CIA as it was also concerned with domestic spying) and his rise to power after the demise of the Soviet Union.
There is zero nuance, as it's a full-scale and unprovoked invasion of the viewer's psyche designed to further propagandize the masses and paint foreign "dictators" as the real threat to our so-called freedom and democracy in the collective west. The way the character (and all of them, really) is portrayed is just completely one-sided and worse still, unbelievable. The production is also amateur all around. I normally find something to compliment a moviemaker about, but here we have shoddy camera work, terrible framing and lighting, the sound is awful, the soundtrack could come straight from a Red Scare era propaganda film, and the acting is out of this world bad.
Think about that for a second - this movie has ZERO redeeming qualities. If they had made a well shot, professionally produced and - most importantly competently written and acted - movie, I could have appreciated it on its technical and artistic merits. But alas there is absolutely nothing positive to say about this, and what's worse is it will obviously fail to gain interest or engage viewers for the producers' intended effect - villainizing an already comically hyper-villainized Russian autocrat in whose real-life orbit even more villainous people exist. Honestly, I could have probably achieved at least a 4 star film with just the script, but these guys failed miserably and they have clearly employed the services of a troll army to downvote every honest negative review.
Avoid this. Read Putin's Wikipedia page instead.
