Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

It's hard to criticize a movie which is based on true facts and in which people suffer great injustice. But I wonder if it does justice to the real events and the actual persons. It is overly melodramatic and somehow I felt it insulted my intelligence. When I am supposed to be outraged about something I would like to have a solid reason.Perhaps the biggest flaw is the complete absence of motive. Why does a Russian French couple with a small son move from France to the Soviet Union in 1946? Idealism, patriotism, homesickness, love of Communism? And what exactly did they expect? They must have known that at that time almost every town in the Western Soviet Union was practically razed to the ground by the Germans. Entire cities along the river Dnepr were rebuilt practically from zero. So, seeing the family move into a shared flat in a comfortable apartment bloc in an intact neighborhood in the center of Kiev makes them come through as comparatively privileged and well embedded into the system. What else, what better could have happened to them? It did not help either that the main character, the French woman, comes through as a self centered, bitchy, constantly nagging chauvinist, played by Sandrine Bonnaire, France's answer to Jessica Lange. There is not much there to like in her, and her air of superiority is pretty hard to bear. „At home we speak French", she on one occasion admonishes her son in an angry tone of voice, straining to make him understand their special situation, their being different, transferring her very private concerns to her son. It is not entirely surprising that her husband turns to another women after a while.Probably the story closest to this one is „not without my daughter", which I have not read or seen on the screen. So maybe this is more a movie about a clash of cultures and less about historical realities.

Excellent movie about the Cold war. It exposes, little by little, step by step, the inhumanity and constant terror/murder tactics the communist regime in Russia used to maintain itself in power.The same model was followed by the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states once these countries were occupied by the Soviet army after World War two.To people living in Western democracies many of the facts the movie shows may seem unbelievable, but they are completely true.Historians even today cannot agree on the total number of people who lost their lives in the Soviet Union in the '30s and '40s and '50s, but the minimum number everyone seems to accept is 10 million people. Not POW's, not foreigners, but Russians (both peasants and city dwellers) who happened to come to the attention of the KGB due to some comment made while talking to friends or, even better, due to some anonymous letter denouncing them as 'traitors to the communist state'. Their homes confiscated, most of them were sent to prisons or camps (Siberia) from where nobody ever returned.The same extermination measures were used by Stalin and the KGB against American citizens who had emigrated in the U.R.S.S. at the height of the Depression in the 1930's in search of jobs. There is a very good documentary on the subject which airs once in a while on the Canadian History channel.Given all these historical facts, it is grotesque to see today all the trouble the Russian state goes to in order to construct itself the image of an emerging democracy, when its population is just as terrorized and pauperized as it was 50 years ago.

This is excellent-quality movie from technical and historical part. I also liked the realism of situation in post-World War II Soviet Union. I'm suggesting to watch that strong drama everyone who is interesting in history or good storyline. What I didn't like is too much time skipping in the second part of the movie and too slow-on-action part one. It seems like there were two different directors, who tried to bring together one plot. Another disadvantage is accent of some of international actors when they are speaking Russian, however actors play really good and naturally. Overall, I did enjoy the movies, however I didn't suggest it to the people who just want to see action or comedy. This is serious drama and your mood must be the same.

Although Catherine Deneuve is not the star of this film, anything with her in it is surely worth seeing. The main actors -- Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, and Sergei Bodrov, Jr. -- acquit themselves quite well in this tale about a Soviet emigre (Menshikov) who commitsthe terrible error of returning to the Soviet Union after World War II, bringing his French wife (Bonnaire) and their young son. The rest of the movie is largely about their difficult life and her all-consuming desire to return to France after they quickly discover that life in the Soviet Union is grim and that they are suspect. Deneuve appears as a fellow-traveling French actress who eventually makes it possible for Bonnaire to return home after she's spent six years in prison for helping a young man she befriended to escape the country. Bonnaire is startlingly good and Menshikov as the deluded doctor who brought hisfamily back to the Soviet Union is also excellent.