“The
Death of Stalin” is a 2017 political satire comedy film directed and co-written
by Armando Iannucci. It stars Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy
Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough and
Jeffrey Tambor.
Its
plot is centrally true which takes place in 1953 Moscow when the murderous tyrannical
dictator Joseph Stalin suddenly drops dead. His parasitic propped up crony
friends square off in a frantic power struggle to be the next Soviet leader.
Among the contenders are the dweeby Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), the wily
Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), and the sadistic secret police Chief
Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale). But as they bumble, brawl, and backstab
their way to the top, just who is running the government? Combining palace
intrigue with rapid-fire farce, this film is a bitingly odd and funny examination
of bureaucratic dysfunction in a highly centralize government as the case then with
the communist Soviet Union.
REVIEW: “The Death of Stalin” for all of its effort to
be humorous in the manner of a “Monty Python” film, I found it more of an insightful
examination of the human nature to secure power through greed, deception,
conceit and vindictiveness, even while the circumstance of it all were somewhat
hilarious and ridiculous to even contemplate.
It
is less a film of real historical figures and more of an ensemble cast of odd ball
characters in the purest sense of the word as we watch them seriously conspire and
calculating plot their path to power all the while do it with a slapstick silliness
against one another to be the new Secretary of the Soviet empire. You chuckle at
their lunacy and yet you never forget that these men were the cause of deaths
of untold innocent Soviet citizens.
If
you like irony, satire and slapstick through the black comedy mocking prism of a
bunch of historical middle age politburos power obsessed communist bureaucratic despots who cannot distinguish consequentially
the difference of not having enough cream in their coffee to shooting someone
in the head for some slight misstep then “The Death of Stalin” is your kind of
film.
3.25
Stars
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