Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

murpz This movie haunted me for months after seeing it, but I think that it should be considered required viewing. This movie does an amazing job at showing the kind of mindset which allows tyrants like Stalin to get away with their crimes. Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it, and this movie does a great job at hammering that understanding home in a very heart-wrenching manner. This movie will shake you up but you'll come away from it with some really interesting perspectives on the human spirit and what we're capable of.

Cliff Sloane There are a myriad of insightful techniques in this film that reveal themselves with repeated viewings. The recurring images of cows being led to slaughter are my favorites. A great tale of a horrible situation.That being said, I did not appreciate Russians speaking English with Russian accents. I compare it to the way the DeNiro film "Stalin" dealt with language. Ethnic Russians spoke with very proper British accents, ordinary Russians with common English accents, and Stalin with a rough accent, using simple language, that was hard to place. I also found Tom Hulce's performance to be excessively maudlin. The sense of irony that all the other characters seemed to have was absent in his.

Bobs-9 This film is a great favorite of mine, though it's a hard-sell to recommend to friends. It's an extremely moving story that brings tears to your eyes, without manipulating you by "pulling the strings." The pathos emerge from the events and the (very well-played) characters depicted. Russian artists seem to have a special affinity for this, and for Konchalovsky this is a very accessible film. Was it tailor-made for Western audiences? The cast would suggest so. Although Tom Hulce was wonderful in "Amadeus," seeing him in "The Inner Circle" impressed me no end. I think it's telling that more than one reviewer of Russian descent on the IMDb found his characterization quintessentially Russian. It's a damn shame we don't see more of his work in films these days. The character of Ivan's wife Anastasia might have helped given rise to some comments that the characters are two-dimensional. As played by Lolita Davidovich, she is all simple, sweet naivety. Somewhat distractingly, for me she evoked memories of Gilda Radner in her appearance and voice. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her performance, and thought it an honest and effective one. All of us should have the opportunity to know someone like Anastasia in our lifetimes. Like many such characters in works of fiction, she proves to be too good to live. The scene at the end of the film, when Ivan sees the teenaged Katya amongst the mob at Stalin's funeral, and runs over the heads and shoulders of the crowd to prevent her from killing herself in the lethal crush -- it's absolutely devastating. How Konchalovsky finds a credible way to set the scene of their cathartic breakdown to each other to the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony is really ingenious. I get misty just writing about it. Maybe it's not for everybody, but I can't praise it highly enough.

FFC There is a human tragedy of global scale - and those humans who sway this tragedy and who just turned out to be grains of sand under those wheels of history. To model what those people were in their good and weak producers and authors of "The Inner Circle" made an awesome cast in this movie - don't you agree that Bob Hoskins playing marshal Berija is worth seeing anyway. Lolita Davidovich's and great Russian actor Oleg Tabakov's was magnificent performance. And at last the central character - Ivan Sanshin - is utterly shrill figure and utterly potent message. Due to genius Tom Hulce who looks and acts completely and very naturally Russian - as I see it being Russian myself. No further words on Tom Hulce - he's just a great actor (though not a "star" in the industry, as I can guess) and every one of his works worth seeing. Even in his small role in "Parenthood" he's very convincing and dramatic - and in "The Inner Circle" he has a great material to work on... An obvious merit of this film - it is historically accurate (with exception of ahead-of-time tanks and probably something else) in details. Accurate Soviet uniforms in a Western movie is really very rare thing and in this film uniform of NKVD-officers looks authentic to the Soviet people like me... And the director's job is not bad at all - Konchalovsky has his peaks and faults and The Inner Circle is one of the peaks, I guess...