Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

jatrius Avoid. Interminable opening crowd scenes of labour activists arguing as they parade in a clumsy attempt to highlight the passion of the schism. Romy Scheider and Alain Delon are strangely passionless and Richard Burton's Trotsky is on autopilot. Maybe they all just fancied a holiday in Mexico. There's no dramatic tension because there's no sympathy available for the characters on screen; instead the viewer is willing the whole ensemble to get on with it so that they can do something more interesting with their life like stare at fridge magnets or grout some bath tiles. ***** Spoiler Alert **** Trotsky does get assassinated. It's as banal as that.

esteban1747 Stalin hated Trotsky for many reasons, one among them is that Lenin in his famous testament strongly criticized Stalin as a tough and badly educated leader while recognized Trotsky as the most intelligent politician among the Bolcheviks. In that way Trostky was a kind of impediment for Stalin to seize the whole power in Soviet Union. The party trusted Stalin and the first thing he did was to start a snare campaign against Trotsky among the high bosses of the party as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who finally supported Stalin in this deed. As a result Trostky was declared a traitor and expelled from USSR, living first at the border of USSR, then in Turkey and finally in Mexico. He continued writing and had an increased number of people following him, a fact enough for Stalin to order his assassination. To this end Stalin and his KGB tools used Mexican communists led by the famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. They attempted to kill Trostki once unsuccessfully, then decided to change for another way, i.e. to introduce the agent Jacques Mornard, who in fact was not from Belgium as he claimed to be, but Spanish citizen Ramón Mercader del Río, son of mother born in Cuba. Mornard or Mercader finally killed Trostky, but not his ideas. In fact Stalin made a big mistake because trostkism increased and gained a lot of popularity in several countries after the death of Trostky. The present film is just an effort to show something of this fatal happening, but it is not the best in my opinion. There is no introduction to Trostki, how he was expelled from USSR, why this happened, how he arrived in Mexico. Not knowing the history, it will be very difficult to guess that Stalin was behind this assassination. The relationship of Trostki with some communists, as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is neither shown at all. The role of Trostky is played well by Richard Burton although he looked fatter than the real Trostky, but Alain Delon as Mornard or Mercader did not play this role convincingly. Mercader was a Stalinist fanatic, and this characteristic is not seen in the role played by Delon. He looked as schizophrenic rather than a man with political convictions.

austrianmoviebuff To sum it up in one sentence: A forgettable movie, but a forgivable mistake.Losey. Burton. Delon. Schneider. Cortese. Trotsky. A bunch of great names, thrown into the depths of a weak script that wants to be both, a history lesson and an entertaining political thriller. Shot on location in Mexico and Rome, this European co-production was groomed for international success and turned out to be a devastating disappointment for everyone involved. The audience couldn't cope with it and stayed away, the critics weren't impressed.The film chronicles the last days of Trotzky (Richard Burton) as a political refugee in Mexico City. Alain Delon tries to play Frank Jacson, a Belgian traveling on a Canadian passport, who murders the dedicated Marxist and atheist.It is only for a few precious moments that you can partially perceive Losey's talent which he has proved elsewhere (i.e. in "The Servant", "A Doll's House" or "Accident"), and Delon's performance is vain and unconvincing. (The English language clearly overdrew the actor's abilities.) The Losey/Delon team did much better a couple of years later with "Monsieur Klein".

insomnia One person who has "commented" on this film, consider Losey a 'hack'. Well, I beg to differ. If Joseph Losey had only made such wonderful films as "TheServant", Accident", "King & Country", to name but three, his place as a great director, would be assured. However, I do agree that this film, "TheAssassination Of Trotsky", is not one of Losey's better efforts. In fact, on second viewing, it's a total fiasco. It has no redeeming features whatsoever. I know that Hollywood tends to 'distort' history when it suits them, but "The Assassination of Trotsky" is not a product of the Hollywood Factory. In fact, if Hollywood had made a film about Trotsky, it couldn't, surely, be as bad as this one. Richard Burton plays Trotsky. He does have a passing resemblance to Trotsky, but itends there. Trotsky, who played a major part in the Bolshevik OctoberRevolution of 1917, was also an intellectual and led the lefist opposition to Stalin (how history would have been different if that despot had been deposed!). He was expelled from the party and sent into exile, ending up in a villa near Mexico City. There he founded the Fourth International - devoted to what Trotsky described as 'pure communism'. Which is perhaps why, on Stalin's orders, that Trotsky was assassinated. None of this given the importance it deserves. Without alluding to the crucial role Trotsky played in the founding ofcommunism, anybody who sees this film (poor blighters), will see this film as just so much histrionics. As Trotsky, Burton has all the believability of Groucho Marx in the role of Napoleon: thinking about it, maybe Groucho would have made abetter fist in the role of Trotsky. As for Alain Delon, as the assassin, he's all nervous twitches, and beetled eyebrows. Joseph Losey's mind must have beenon autopilot when he lensed this celluloid travesty