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During Communism, no Soviet film ever mentioned the outlawed Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was the radical alternative to the Bolsheviks prior to 1917. Karen Shakhnazarov’s 2004 film brings that censorship to a less than satisfactory end. The setting is 1906, and an underground SR cadre moves from Russian city to city, shadowing a duke whom the members plan to murder. We learn little about their politics, only that they’re a stiff, disgruntled lot that includes Vanya (Artyom Semakin), who retains his Christian convictions, and George (Andrei Panin), who between failed assassinations skips between a draggy mistress and a sexy one. Whose side is the movie on? Shakhnazarov directs impersonally and without a point of view, and the story meanders. Could the SR group be stand-ins for Chechen terrorists? You can’t tell from this clunky, ideologically opaque film.
BY GERALD PEARY
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