Merciless, challenging, complex and ultimately successful satire.

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2018)

This is a very difficult film to figure out. It has the biting satire and perfectly constructed slapstick of Armando Iannucci's other work, but it is quite different, narratively. There are no sympathetic characters, no naive protagonist for the viewer to empathise with and no emotionally engaging narrative arc. However, none of those omissions make it a bad film. In fact, I suspect that they are all deliberate. The film seeks to alienate the viewer, inspiring a kind of can't-look-away compulsion and repulsion with extreme violence and slapstick comedy placed side-by-side. This is irony on a grand scale, an ironic use of irony. Two days after seeing the film, I still haven't quite figured out if this works, but I've enjoyed and been challenged by the process of mulling it over, so I guess that means it did work?
It has certainly stayed with me more than most films do, at least partly because of how accurate it is. Look up just about any of the events referred to in the film (not the dialogue, of course) and it turns out they are true or even UNDERSTATED. I can't outline those here without spoiling the film, but I would recommend that after watching it you look up Vasily Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria on Wikipedia and be prepared to be astonished and horrified.
The performances are mostly top notch, with the characters all watchable despite their despicable nature.