Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

When three bodies, two men and a woman, are discovered in Moscow's Gorky Park with their faces and other identifying features removed the case is given to Militia inspector Arkady Renko. He is immediately concerned as the KGB have taken an interest in the case but declined his suggestion that they should take over the investigation. The only clues Renko has are the fact that one of the dead had dental work done in the United States, strongly suggesting he was a foreigner, and the woman was wearing ice-skates that had been reported stolen Irina Asanova, a worker on a film set. Hoping to identify the bodies Renko takes two of the heads to Professor Andreev so that he can reconstruct their faces. Fairly early on Renko is introduced to American Furrier Jack Osbourne; a name that keeps cropping up but what could he have to do with the dead bodies? He also crosses paths with another American; William Kirwill, an NYPD detective, who is looking for his missing brother and doesn't trust any agents of the Soviet state.When this film was made the idea of setting a film in Moscow with characters, including the protagonist, who were primarily Russian was almost unthinkable even if it was to feature Western actors and be filmed in Finland. Even though Russia isn't seen as an exotic location these days the film is as good as ever. There is an intriguing central mystery as who the people were killed is as important as who did it. There is also a good sense of paranoia, possibly well founded, as it appears that the KGB are taking a very close interest in Renko. The cast does a really impressive job; William Hurt is great as Renko and Lee Marvin manages to be both menacing and jovial as Osbourne. Brian Dennehy and Joanna Pacula also impress as William Kirwill and Irena. The rest of the cast is made up of familiar British actors including Michael Elphick, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid and Alexei Sayle to name just a few. While this is very much a drama there are some moments of humour; I particularly laughed at Alexei Sayle's used car salesman/KGB informer. Director Michael Apted nicely captured the sense of paranoia and desire to escape a closed society as well as creating a cold atmosphere of the Russian winter. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of detective dramas looking for something a bit different.

Something truly hideous is being hidden under snowy graves, and from where it came, from who put it there, and why sustains this mystery set in communist Moscow. For militia officer William Hurt, the discovery of three dead bodies with the faces removed is a horrific sight, and hoping that the KGB will take the case off of his hands proves false. The presence of two Americans (Lee Marvin and Brian Dennehy) adds more mystery to the case, with Dennehy blaming Hurt for killing his brother and Marvin somehow connected in ways that Hurt can only guess.Every time he seems closer to solving the case, a key witness or partner is brutally murdered, leaving only a beautiful Russian girl (Joanna Pacula) as a key witness. This intriguing but convoluted thriller keeps your attention but can get rather frustrating as it twists until it really begins to get painful. The Russian location shooting is beautiful (everything there seems huge!), and even in just speaking English with slight accents, the American actors playing Russians are believable. Marvin, playing a rather perverted character, is commanding, especially when discussing his love of sable, Hurt is understandably perplexed and disgusted, and Dennehy shows how to non-act and maintain your attention even when not saying a word. Pacula, as well, is interesting, and its obvious that everyone under Michael Apted's direction was challenged by the material. However, it has an ugly premise and the convoluted motivations just don't gel when all is revealed. This is the type of film that you might view once, but afterwards file it away to never pick up again.

**SPOILERS** When three faceless bodies are found buried in the snow in Moscow's Gorky Park the city's police militia chief inspector Ankavy Renko, William Hurt, and his assistance Pasha, Michael Elphick, are immediately called on the scene. Things like this just don't happen in Moscow and the head of the city's police, Alexanderr Knox, wan't the killer or killers found before a panic breaks out among the population.Right away Renko realized that there was a lot more to this triple murder then what at first meets the eye. Why did the killer slice off his victims faces with surgical precision and even more surprising why did the dreaded KGB in the person of Maj. Pribluda, Rikki Fulton, take over the murder case which didn't seem to involve national security? Or did it! Renko gets his first break on this puzzling case when it's reported that one of the victims-a woman-ice skates was reported to have been stolen from Russian actress Irina Asanova, Joanna Pacula, about a week before she was found murdered and mutilated in Gorky Park! That person is later identified as being Valerya Davidova, Marjaha Nissinen, who just happened to have attended the same collage with Irina as well as being her best friend! It also comes out that the other two bodies found at the murder site were that of Kostia Borodin, Heikki Leppanen, and American tourist James Kirwill, Jukka Hirvikangas, who were unloved in smuggling desperate Russian citizens out of the Soviet Union. It's James' brother a detective in the NYPD William Kirwill, Brian Dennehy, who's now in Moscow looking to find his murderer and bring him to justice! This in fact complicates things even more then they already are for the Moscow Police with Kirwill not willing to cooperating with them but going on his own in finding his brother's killer. In putting all the pieces together Renko soon finds out that the three murder victims as well as the terrified, in what would happen to her if she talks, Irina are all linked together to one person: American successful businessman and entrepreneur Jack Osborne, Lee Marvin!Osborne it soon comes out has an inside track with higher ups in both the KGB and Moscow City Government and is in fact untouchable from the law even in the case of a multiple murder that he may very well have committed! As a by now obsessed Renko digs up more evidence on Osborne his life becomes endangered in that he's not just dealing with Osborne but top KGB officials as well as those in his own department, the Moscow Police Milita, who will go as far as murder to keep him from finding out the truth! A truth so shockingly mind boggling that if Osborne succeeds with what he's, and his renegade KGB and Moscow Police accomplices, attempting to do it can lead to the collapse of a major part of the Soviet economy that the Soviet Union totally monopolizes!Unusual movie about Soviet Police procedure that doesn't have people being tortured and beating into giving written confessions to crimes that they didn't commit. In fact the way that Moscow Police Milita Chief Investigator Renko goes about his business in uncovering a baffling mass murder is so professional and calculating that even many US & Western Europe police department can learn from it. ***SPOILERS*** The movie ends in a OK Corral style shoot-out in the frozen woods outside Stockholm Sweden-not Moscow-where Osborne planned to not only make his escape but knock off everyone, including his accomplices in crime, who could connect him not only to the Gorky Park murders but to what his real motives were really all about: Destroying a major part of the Russian economy by making himself filthy rich off it. Both William Hurt and newcomer Joanna Pacula as Ankady Renko & Irina Asanova give the film, that in many cases is hard to follow, the zip and tension that it needs to keep its audiences full attention even during the scenes when it gets overly boring. As for Lee Marvin as the mysterious Jack Osborne his weather beaten and wrinkled face, especially in his close-up scenes, looked like a road-map to a graveyard which his hard living and drinking lifestyles lead him into some four years later.

It's never been clear to me why anyone ever thought of William Hurt as a particularly good actor. He's over-matched in this mystery story by his co-stars, Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy and Joanna Pacula. If director Michael Apted asked Hurt to show restraint, he certainly obeyed the order. His character, a Russian police inspector being used by superiors in a triple murder that might have been committed by the KGB, might display self-restraint but Hurt seemed to this viewer to display no emotion whatever during most of the film. On the other hand, Brian Dennehy as a New York police detective interested in the case because his brother was one of the victims and Lee Marvin as an American rich because of his central role in the illegal ermine trade may be guilty of overacting but they succeed in making their less interesting characters more interesting than Hurt's. The surprise in this film is Joanna Pacula as a friend of the three victims who herself is hoping to escape Russia for the West, which is what they were hoping to do. She's the one personality in the film who seems able to show genuine emotion. Her love affair with Hurt's police inspector is plausible but who would fall in love with such a wooden creature?