Expected more

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

What is remarkable about this meandering documentary is that it contains archival footage before the sinister murder, by radioactive poisoning, of the FSB defector who is the subject of the film. It leaves no doubt that the Putin regime murdered Alexandre Litvinenko in London in a particularly brazen crime. It imparts some warmth to Litvinenko and his wife and a few other dissidents, but the downside is the overwhelmingly dark, and apparently accurate, description it provides of a Russia hopelessly corrupt at the top and hopelessly servile in the mass. It is a disturbing film, made on a shoestring (with a bad musical score tacked together), but the human tragedy at its heart is inescapable.

This film was effective in showing the scary nature of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, but it did nothing to help solve the murder of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. It is a kind of "J'accuse" work that doesn't produce any evidence to back up its accusation besides presenting credible testimony about the corruption, brutality and even murderousness of FSB functionaries, and showing Litvinenko himself making a lot of these allegations on camera.But this forms the entire basis of the film's case against Litvinenko's former FSB colleagues. There is no examination of how the polonium-210 wound up in Litvinenko's system. Andrei Lugovoy, who is now sought by the British police as a suspect, is interviewed, and talks about polonium-210. He and his monosyllabic sidekick do look rather creepy, but that is all, and when they offer the interviewer a cup of tea, there is a black comedy moment.This is an indictment of Russia's "Chekists" (spooks), who supposedly run Russia as evidenced by the fact that one of their own, Vladimir Putin, is Russia's president. The logic runs as follows: there is a lot of murder and corruption in Russia, Putin is president, Putin is ex-KGB, therefore the ex-KGB are responsible for all the murder and corruption. This is not, incidentally, a fanciful notion. Russia is very corrupt and former Soviet security service officials are in places of high power in government and industry. But it does not necessarily follow that Putin ordered Litvinenko's murder, and this film fails to convince.In fact, interesting theories arise when one poses the question: qui bono? Who stood to gain most by Litvinenko's murder? If Litvinenko fled Russia and continued his fierce accusations against Putin and the Russian regime, and then was assassinated, the finger would naturally point at the Kremlin. As it happened, condemnation was directed at the Russian government from around the world, which greatly benefited exiled Russian oligarch and fierce Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky, with whom Litvinenko had associated before he died. Could Berezovsky have killed Litvinenko? I was actually left with the impression that the director, Andrei Nekrasov, intended at least to hint at this possibility.The film essentially points the finger at Putin and the FSB for the apartment bombings in Russia in 1999, which were blamed on the Chechens. These bombings served as the pretext for renewed war against Chechnya, and the blitz propelled Putin into the presidency. The theory—which is very believable—is that the apartment bombings were part of a Chekist plot to replace the ailing Boris Yeltsin with the authoritarian Vladimir Putin, thus securing the security services' hold over the Russian political system. Berezovsky has made these very allegations from the safety of his estate in England, yet a closer look at the history of these incidents reveals that Berezovsky himself was part of the cabal that helped Putin to power. It was only after Putin became president that Berezovsky fled to Britain, having been betrayed by the new regime.If the pro-Putin clique and Berezovsky were jointly culpable in the 1999 apartment bombings, it would perhaps be more difficult for the Putin regime to publicly accuse Berezovsky than vice-versa. It would automatically invite the question: how do you know? How would the Russian regime present evidence of Berezovsky's complicity in a terrorist acts without at the same time implicating itself?

A fascinating piece, both in its contents and cinematic form. Editing is particularly strong, given the nature of the access which became impossible the moment the world started to pay attention. Nekrasov had been interested in Litvinenko before the latter's tragic fame but this film was apparently put together only after the poisoning. I've seen some other pics on the subject but none came anywhere near creating this unsettling sensation of being in the middle of it all. That is partly because of the director's on screen interaction with Litvinenko, which allowed me to identify with the narrator and made Litvinenko more credible (half of the Russians think he was a criminal, going by the official propaganda). I lived in Russia and Ukraine but somehow watching "Rebellion..." in Toronto really shocked, frightened and angered me forcing to redefine the term "corrution" in my mind. In some parts of the world corruption evidently means murder. "Rebellion" is structured like a novel, divided in chapters, and it masterfully controls various lines of the complex plot; but ultimately it is not a murder story and those who expect one might be disappointed. I admit I had myself wondered why a "Litvinenko movie" should be called "Rebellion", but having watched it I cannot think of a more appropriate title.

This is a bad film about a fascinating subject. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB agent murdered by his former colleagues, was a fascinating man. Unfortunately, the director decided to make the film as much about himself as about Litvinenko. The film meanders for close to two hours, delving into this tangent and that, never entirely finishing a thought or even making much sense, and lingering far too often on the director's handsome but ultimately irrelevant face.And the tangents? Mostly incomprehensible. Something about Putin and money laundering? Forgive me, but I have no idea what that was about, despite having watched a German journalist explain it to the filmmaker for what felt like an eternity. And then there's the camera-work. Some interviews have a fixed master shot that's cut with shots from a hand-held camera that appears to have been wielded by a 10-year-old with ADD. Other interviews don't even have the benefit of a steady master shot, and zoom suddenly to the subject's hands, eye, ear, whatever's handy. Now, it's one thing to use the point-of-view handycam technique to create a sense of intimacy and danger and illicit observation - we are, after all, talking about spies and secrecy. But the filmmaker doesn't know when to stop, and after the first two or three times, the effect is distracting and alienating.And finally... the film has at least half a dozen endings. Just when you thought it was over... NO! We're not done yet. Islam! He converted to Islam! Huh? What's this film about again?