You'll have to dig very gravely for the comedy gold....

Rating: 3/10 (21 October 2017)

Armando Iannucci has a reputation for comedy gold but, in my opinion, his gold definitely appears tarnished with this production.
Despite having high production values and a wonderful cast, this film struggles to raise a cynical smirk. The cinema auditorium remained deathly silent - perhaps in embarrassment - not knowing quite what to make of this very uneven piece of work. Perhaps it was the way that the film lurched between Stalin's victims ears full of blood and the sporadic sound of shooting and an uninspired slapstick carrying of Stalin's ailing body that left the audience unsure of how to react. Whatever the reason, it didn't work.
Simon Russell Beale excels as the casually evil Beria, but Michael Palin - who normally steals any scene - lacks his usual mischievous waspishness. Even they can't rescue this dark drama. The settings are very convincing, however.
With uncertainty and few laughs, this ill-conceived concept failed to grab my interest and became only the second film that I have walked out of after an hour during the last fifteen years. It felt wrong to laugh during the violence.Tarantino and Bond are one genre - that is fictional violence and gore. Ultimately I felt that it was offensive to try to create laughs over a background of terror, torture and murder that actually happened and was an appalling time for humanity.
What next. 'Holocaust - the Musical' ?