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Citizen XRating:
Release Date: 11 July, 2000 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $6.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (8 total) |
Citizen X Reviews
EXCELLENT, SPELLBINDING SOVIET MURDER MYSTERY
Ably directed by Chris Gerolmo and filmed entirely in Budapest, Hungary, CITIZEN X is the true story of the excruciating bureaucratic problems faced by a young forensic pathologist (Lt. Viktor Burakov, played to the hilt by Stephen Rea ) assigned as an investigator to the Soviet Union's worst serial murder. During Burakov's first night on the job as a crime pathologist, a young girl is brought in -- and immediately he notices that the detective was wrong saying she had been killed in a field. "Go back and look for evidence in a nearby wood," he orders the tired and bored policemen. "Now?!" they ask increduluosly. Burakov insists, now. Grudgingly they go back -- only to return with half a dozen decomposed bodies of youngsters from the nearby forest.
Thus begins CITIZEN X. When the next day an exhausted Burakov makes a report to a police committee on the grisly serial murder of children, his superior Col. Mikhail Fetisov (wonderfully well played by the irrascible Donald Sutherland) quietly winces. The Communist Party Secretary who wields the power in the room Comrade Bondarchuk (similarly well played, Russian accent and all, by British actor Joss Ackland) contemptously rejects Burakov's theory because, "serial murders are impossible in the USSR! Those only exist in the degenerate capitalist countries." Burakov is speechless.
Recognizing Bukarov's single minded dedication to solve the murders, Col. Fetisov assigns the bewildered pathologist to lead the investigation. The rest of the film takes us through the torturous experiences of Bukarov trying to track down the real murderer as fresh childen's bodies keep piling up. And as he gets closer to solving the crimes, the competing villain is the stifling bureaucratic Soviet system that is drowning in its own corrupted incompetence. Valuable time is being wasted as Comrade Bondarchuk becomes all the more menacing because Bukarov is not subordinating himself to this bureaucrat's wrong crime theories.
All of the supporting actors (Bukarov's angelic wife and his children) are as good in their roles as are those playing the main characters. But there is a continuity problem here.
Twelve years were to have passed between the beginning of the film and the end, yet Lt. Burakov's children do not age in those twelve years.
Later in the film, Max von Sidow's convincingly plays a clinical psychiatrist Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky who reluctantly agrees to try profiling the murderer (not really what he had been trained to do). Somewhere in the middle of all this, the Soviet Union undergoes a complete collapse. Yet Bukarov keeps investigating as though his life depended on it.
The film's climax is spellbinding.
very weird movie
i think the movie is very weird for a few reasons. First the whole thing is happening in Russia, but the movie is in english language the ameriacn actors and actreses are made to speak english with a heavy russian accent, and they are not very good at it, i had to run subtitles thru the entire movie. even the fact that i am from the former soviet union myself and i understand russian did not help at all. it is really weird to see Donald Sutherland trying to speak english with an accent. Also they overuse the word "comrade", it was never used in everyday communication, it is not a casual word. Also ppls outfits and some other facts are faked and made up. I never finished watching it.
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