The good: The case itself: script stuck close to the details of the Chikatilo case which are as creepy as anything in the history of serial murderers.
Excellent acting. Unlike others, I liked the phony Russian accents. It's a lot better than the typical British accents so often given to any kind of foreigner in US-made films.
Some brilliant scenes: several of the victim scenes were truly disturbing, especially the girl at the train station. It's a horrible "Lolita" moment when we see her through the filter of Chikatilo's fantasy world. This movie really felt like it was made half by some hack, and half by some total genius. The victim scenes were the genius at work. As for the hack...
The bad: The musical score: totally intrusive and clumsy. Too bad they couldn't score this to whatever music people listened to in late Soviet era Rostov. Failing that, it's not like the Russians haven't composed some pretty decent classical music.
Victims falling backward in slo-mo: this shot was repeated several times and flat-out sucked. Feels like it was spliced in much later by someone who didn't really understand that the best scenes are ones that let our imagination fill in the blanks.
Revealing the killer too early: OK, I know this wasn't supposed to be a whodunit, but they gave away the suspense to everyone including those who might not be familiar with the case. At the time portrayed early in the film the investigators were guessing wildly at who the perp might be. By allowing the audience to do the same HBO would have created a more realistic feel to the kind of nameless dread which surrounds these cases.
The ugly: Chikatilo: I didn't like the sympathetic portrayal of a psychopath. It's as if the director allowed himself to be fooled by Chikatilo's self-pitying facade. He was a sniveller and a creep, a thief and a child molester, and ultimately a mass murderer. Any empathy generated for him wasn't empathy at all but gullibility of the same kind shown by Chikatilo's victims; the ones who didn't realize that the kindly old gentleman who was offering them food, shelter, money or simply companionship on the way home was in fact already visualizing how he would kill and mutilate them.
Chikatilo, when caught, described his childhood (awful), first sexual experience (what sounds like a rape of one of his sister's friends), and subsequent humiliations due to his "sexual problem" (one of his girlfriends made fun of him). I'm sure he felt like the world was supposed to feel sorry for him. Of course when the world responded to his initial child molesting by turning him into the authorities, he decided that in the future he'd make sure his victims didn't talk.
For a guy with a supposed sexual problem he was frequently seen receiving fellatio from prostitutes, managed to father two children, and raped numerous victims. The film doesn't show us that side of Andrei Chikatilo but rather the scene of him crying out his confession, a sad old man, a "victim" too.
Gag.
What saves the film is that the focus is on the investigation, how a series of crimes of this magnitude was worked in the last days of the Soviet state. Doesn't hurt to have a guy like Sutherland playing one of the key characters either.
This is probably a 7 for most people, but I gave it an 8 because I like movies about Russia, and some of the individual scenes were memorable.
RstJ
Excellent acting. Unlike others, I liked the phony Russian accents. It's a lot better than the typical British accents so often given to any kind of foreigner in US-made films.
Some brilliant scenes: several of the victim scenes were truly disturbing, especially the girl at the train station. It's a horrible "Lolita" moment when we see her through the filter of Chikatilo's fantasy world. This movie really felt like it was made half by some hack, and half by some total genius. The victim scenes were the genius at work. As for the hack...
The bad: The musical score: totally intrusive and clumsy. Too bad they couldn't score this to whatever music people listened to in late Soviet era Rostov. Failing that, it's not like the Russians haven't composed some pretty decent classical music.
Victims falling backward in slo-mo: this shot was repeated several times and flat-out sucked. Feels like it was spliced in much later by someone who didn't really understand that the best scenes are ones that let our imagination fill in the blanks.
Revealing the killer too early: OK, I know this wasn't supposed to be a whodunit, but they gave away the suspense to everyone including those who might not be familiar with the case. At the time portrayed early in the film the investigators were guessing wildly at who the perp might be. By allowing the audience to do the same HBO would have created a more realistic feel to the kind of nameless dread which surrounds these cases.
The ugly: Chikatilo: I didn't like the sympathetic portrayal of a psychopath. It's as if the director allowed himself to be fooled by Chikatilo's self-pitying facade. He was a sniveller and a creep, a thief and a child molester, and ultimately a mass murderer. Any empathy generated for him wasn't empathy at all but gullibility of the same kind shown by Chikatilo's victims; the ones who didn't realize that the kindly old gentleman who was offering them food, shelter, money or simply companionship on the way home was in fact already visualizing how he would kill and mutilate them.
Chikatilo, when caught, described his childhood (awful), first sexual experience (what sounds like a rape of one of his sister's friends), and subsequent humiliations due to his "sexual problem" (one of his girlfriends made fun of him). I'm sure he felt like the world was supposed to feel sorry for him. Of course when the world responded to his initial child molesting by turning him into the authorities, he decided that in the future he'd make sure his victims didn't talk.
For a guy with a supposed sexual problem he was frequently seen receiving fellatio from prostitutes, managed to father two children, and raped numerous victims. The film doesn't show us that side of Andrei Chikatilo but rather the scene of him crying out his confession, a sad old man, a "victim" too.
Gag.
What saves the film is that the focus is on the investigation, how a series of crimes of this magnitude was worked in the last days of the Soviet state. Doesn't hurt to have a guy like Sutherland playing one of the key characters either.
This is probably a 7 for most people, but I gave it an 8 because I like movies about Russia, and some of the individual scenes were memorable.
RstJ
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