The Death of Stalin - Review

THE DEATH OF STALIN is in theaters on March 16th, 2018.

The Death of Stalin is a wannabe Tarantino film that vastly disappoints. Although funny at times, it’s lack of overall plot coupled with it’s obvious sense of continuity and character development completely forgotten, I wish I could say it lived up to expectations.

The Death of Stalin stars Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, and Simon Russell Beale, all three of which play members of the committee of Russians that are second in command under Stalin in the Soviet Union. As many of you know, two of those 3 actors are American, and in this film, they don’t change their accents at all. Simon Russell Beale on the other hand is a British actor that does a Russian accent throughout the film, although they all are apparently Soviets born and raised.

At first, I thought Buscemi and Tambor were rich Americans drug lords under Stalin’s command, but that is quickly realized to be untrue. At one point in the film, Jeffrey Tambor even yells the line “Kiss my Russian ass!” in a full American accent in the most serious tone his character can express. I thought the obvious lack of accents would play into the comedy of the film, but after realizing that this film isn’t all that funny in the first place, and many themes are very dark and almost too realistic of the times, I just can’t give it a pass.

This film has very dark themes. Themes that, if given to the correct writer and director, could somehow be twisted into a comedic tone. I would say two out of every five jokes actually land in the film. I remember actually busting out laughing one time throughout, but the story is so forgettable I couldn’t tell you what the joke was if you offered me a million dollars.

Looking at the poster, I was expecting a hilarious film set in the Soviet Union that was about watching this cast have fun on screen. Instead, this film is about corruption, deception and horrible characters trying to get ahead of one another, while in the end somehow seemingly getting nowhere. The entire journey feels like a waste of time.

One last thing before my final thoughts, and I’ll try to make it quick. Joking about preteen girls being delivered to powerful government officials to be raped should never be in a spoof comedy shit show. One character has a couple of girls delivered to him throughout the film, and although they don’t show anything or point it out, all of the men joke about blackmailing women for sex and it is obviously insinuated because the character is a bad person. It’s also later confirmed by men that were allowing it to happen just earlier. So the writer of this film used raping little girls as the reason to dislike one villain more than the others. Wow, now I see how it’s so difficult to make it into Hollywood.

If you can’t already guess, I don’t recommend seeing this film. I was expecting to have fun with this movie but instead just continuously made confused faces at the screen. This film has no story whatsoever and I can only ask that you not waste your time.
And by the way, dead Stalin pisses himself.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Logan (Contributor) is a Texas native and a massive fan of all genres of film. You can find him talking about movies on YouTube as half of the CraZCouple or in line for the latest Star Wars/Comic Book film.
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