Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

generationofswine It could have been better. So why the 10? Stalin is sort of human. People like him, like Hitler, like so many other embodiments of evil are exceedingly easy to dehumanize, to make them a devil and not a man.Stalin does a pretty decent job of showing the blindingly evil side of the man and still giving him a human feel. It makes him accessible.So why could it have been better? Stalin was a revolutionary. He was active from the start and played a major role on the Bolshevik side. He was the Soviet premier and he forced a backwards nation to industrialize in a single generation and that is a global record in itself. He fought WWII and crippled the Nazi war machine at the battle of Kursk.The movie should have been an epic. There is a much greater story to tell there. Instead it is tourniqueted. It is cut short and anyone with even a simple enough grasp of Stalin to vaguely know who he is gets the feeling that they are missing out.They made Che, years later, into two epic films. A life as important--and evil--of Stalin deserved more than a made-for-TV movie despite the quality.

oragex I think it's worth a 7/10 but given the focus on Stalin's way of thinking, I give it a 8/10.Some actors play well, others more like on a theater stage. Some scenes are strangely filmed, more like a theater act for some reason.Not the type of 'entertainment' film, as we would see in a Hollywood production, it's somehow like a narration acted documentary.But the main thing is the focus on the main subject. We get to see that Stalin had normal conversations, daily normal contacts with individuals surrounding him. This because we may see him as an horrifying Godzilla because of his dictator status. The scene at the cemetery with the members of his family is eloquent. Despite the poor acting of some of the family members, we get the picture of a dysfunctional clan, and his place into this clan as well.What was in his mind? From the movie, it seems he had for part of the time a lucid mind and evaluation of things, but this seems coupled with a 'broken' part of his mind, altered perhaps by distressing psychological fear and intense physical abuse perpetrated by his father. His (Stalin's) mind seem to had a deranged area of the brain were there is no judgment but fear, violence, brutality, a willing to preserve his own integrity by destroying what appears to put this integrity in danger. If the movie is right, what triggered this brain area was the fear of others, people who would want to hurt him, to his understanding. What caused him to suspect so many random people in this way is not explained in the movie.Put such disturbed brain at power, at the head of an organization or state, and see what happens.

sxygrl2k1 His acting stinks and his accent especially sucks! This guy is terrible in every role I've ever seen him in except for the Godfather. All he does is play himself! Except this time he's hiding behind a giant mustache and using a ridiculous Russian accent. I hope he retires soon. This movie would have been okay without him. I've seen this movie twice and can appreciate that it might be an interesting story but it is still a movie narrative and not completely based on facts. A movie about Stalin should be a lot more interesting but Duval just has no clue how to portray such a complex character as Stalen. He is out of his element and in over his head. They should have better explained at the beginning of the film how Stalin goes from being rejected by the army to being his hero Lenin's right hand man. I should never have given this film a second chance. Robert Duvall is just too terrible to deserve that much. He should stick to making crap like Days of Thunder and leave the real acting to real actors. Also he is bald!

shanfloyd This is one of the rare biopics that offer less opinions and more facts. Over three hours long, the movie covers the dictator's life from his exile in Siberia when he took the name Stalin up to his death in 1953. It does not try to feature the then world politics and even contemporary Russia as a whole, nor it wastes further screen time on the social reaction to Stalin's policies too much. It features Stalin and only Stalin. It focuses exclusively on his personal life (naturally, since the movie is narrated by his daughter Svetlana) and his take on the fellow comrades of the party. And the filmmakers remain more-or-less true to the facts, giving neither imaginative shock moments nor just plain history.Robert DuVall looks nice as Stalin,and his performance is also satisfactory. But I don't know why he used that Vito Corleone accent on him. Did Stalin use to talk that way? I don't know. Julia Ormond does a really magnificent job as his second wife Nadya. Her timid yet free-spirited attitude is nicely portrayed by Ormond. And I also must mention Joanna Roth as Svetlana and Roshan Seth as Beria for a really good job. All the actors lift this movie up to a really higher level. Along with the flawless screenplay, acting is another asset of the film.