Archangel

Plot synopsis:
An English expert on Soviet history, Dr. Kelso (Daniel Craig) arrives in Moscow for a conference on Stalin. After the conference, an old man says that he has important information for Dr. Kelso. In Hotel Ukraine, where Dr. Kelso is staying, Papu Rapava (the name of the old man) tells how he, as a security guard in 1953 Beria I witnessed the death of Stalin. He saw Beria steal a safe from Stalin's Middle dacha some blog and dug in his yard in a box from under the instrument. Kelso went to Beria's former mansion, but saw that the blog has been excavated. The scientist comes to Mamantov (Lev Prygunov), led by the Communist movement Aurora and former agent KGB, and asks him to talk about his diary, saying that he has a witness. But Mamas drives it. Kelso goes to a nightclub, where Rapava's daughter works, Zinaida hooker (Yekaterina Rednikova). He asks to see her father. She takes him to the high-rise building, where his father lives. Once inside, he finds Rapava dead in the bathtub. On leaving the apartment of Dr. beaten by hooligans. He appeals for help from the police, but ends up being detained.

Tags: murder, historical fiction

Review:
This series piques the conspiracy fanatic to see beyond the need for popular 007-esque shoot-em-up scenes from Daniel Craig, and delves more fully into the cultural dissonance and still-oppressed lifestyles in today's Russia.
Archangel Set in contemporary Moscow and the frozen northern town of Archangel, the drama revisits the stark landscape of Communist Russia and takes place over four days in the life of academic Fluke Kelso.
He is led unwittingly through murder and intrigue towards his own personal "Holy Grail" - Joseph Stalin's secret legacy - a legacy that could change the face of Russian history forever.'Archangel' is quite friendly towards those not familiar with the legacy of Josef Stalin, and is an engrossing mystery as a result.
However, Daniel Craig and Russian actress Yekaterina Rednikova give reliable performances, and the ending is definitely not what I was expecting (but in a good way).
Set heavily in Russia, the film actually is acted by many Russian actors/actresses in real life.
All the old clichés are rolled out early in this adaptation of Robert Harris's spy novel 'Archangel': surly Russians, an arrogant English hero, a garrulous American.
Sadly, the ending can't quite deliver on this promise; both because of the risible suggestion that megalomania is an inherited quality, and also because it is surely not (as the film suggests) the worship of Stalin's image that is the real problem in today's Russia, but rather, the social circumstances which make such an absurdity possible.
Archangel, an excellent action/adventure story, was filmed in Moscow and Latvia and originally produced as a two part BBC-TV series.
The cinematography is impressive, the plot is fascinating, and the acting, by both supporting actors and principals is first rate - including what may be Daniel Craig's finest recent performance.
Filmed under what were obviously frequently challenging conditions of rain, snow and cold, Archangel manages to capture the bitter chill and desolation of the countryside in winter as well as the grit and grandeur of Moscow.As the plot unfolds it relates the tale of a Western historian, Kelso  played by Craig  who attends a conference in Moscow only to discover a mystery and a conspiracy dating back to Stalin's death in 1953.
His life in danger, Kelso teams up with a young Russian woman, Zinaida - brilliantly portrayed by Yekaterina Rednikova  to solve the mystery and attempt to foil the plot.Although the story line sounds generally similar to "the Da Vinci Code", Archangel more credibly dramatizes a profound conflict in values between traditionalists and progressives  in this case, in a society where socialism was once the opiate of the intelligentsia.
In that respect it is much like the earlier Russia House, which starred Sean Connery as the western visitor enmeshed in a dangerous conspiracy and internal conflict in the former Soviet Union.To one who lived through the cold war, Archangel does a marvelous job  integrating current events with flashbacks - of depicting the complex ways in which the Russian people did and still do react to Stalin  a proved mass murderer - with fear, with hatred, with admiration and respect, and even with love.
The story doesn't require too extreme a suspension of disbelief, and the portrayal of the Moscow streets and Russian people, rural and urban, powerful or impoverished, opportunists and petty bureaucrats, progressives who long for change and traditionalist who seek a return to an earlier era, is quite realistic.One of the greatest pleasures of Archangel is the opportunity to see Daniel Craig at his best.
He brings wit, charm and intelligence to the role of Kelso in a way that he was either unable or not allowed to do in either Casino Royale or Munich.Craig is obviously a very talented actor  and in Archangel, delivers a performance that far outshines his work in Casino Royale  as well as that of the other Bond  Sean Connery  in a similar role in the aforementioned Russia House.
About Russian history, lifestyle and society with a surprisingly great Daniel Craig.
As a big fan of history and Russian culture, I was excited to watch this movie but didn't expect very much from a TV production.
Useless to say that this movie is a must seen for anyone who likes Russian history, society and lifestyle.
I've travelled to Russia and seen and lived a lot of particular things there and must admit that the behaviours of the police, the military and the government in this movie are not a stupid cliché but quite close to reality.
Even the locations chosen for the shootings remind me of the modern Russian post-soviet lifestyle even though most of the scenes have been filmed in Latvia.Well, I got largely surprised as this movie is really intense and has a realistic scenario that makes you think a lot about nowadays's societies and ideologies.
The movie's finale is dramatically and interesting.The most positive surprise in this movie is the acting of Daniel Craig.
A total of two hours was not really long enough to do credit to the story, so given the time constraint, the end result was not too bad at all.
This is also the first time I have seen Daniel Craig in a movie since his rise to James Bond.
It is adapted from a Robert Harris novel - a western researcher discovers a secret notebook from Stalin which dark forces are prepared to kill to keep secret.
With the exception of the new series of DOCTOR WHO , this has got to be the most publicised BBC serial of the year , and with good reason I guess since Robert Harris is a popular and acclaimed novelist whose books make very informative reading !!!!
The FATHERLAND TVM set in a Nazi dominated world of the 1960s is hated by fans of the novel , while ENIGMA doesn't really lend itself to the way the movie was marketed and it's the same with this BBC miniseries Is the Russian tundra a good location for a thriller ?
Exposition in a book is one thing because you can dedicate many pages of characters thought process , but watching it on a television screen means the characters and dialogue come off as unnatural But ironically it's Harris's plot where everything comes apart - Stalin had a son who no one knows about and is trying to force the new Russia into communist dictatorship again.
result - Daniel Craig in a poor version of James Bond, dark secrets about Stalin and solutions - miracle to each problem.
I think Archangel still rates as one of the worlds great forbidden places so seeing it in this movie was definitely unique.
While watching this film I kept thinking of the Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov who wrote about political and economic matters in Russia and got very close to the inner circle of Oligarchs and then was eventually assassinated.He was the editor for Forbes in Russia and was shot while leaving the office one night.
Transported to the hospital in an ambulance with no oxygen, upon arrival the elevator broke down while being taken to surgery.Though the main character played by Craig in this film is not shot, he comes close to getting assassinated.This is a very interesting film if you are into the political history of Russia.
But it is slow at times and everyone is a bit too aloof, so the character development is shallow.But it's a good film in other respects.
"Archangel" is a BBC production in three parts done in 2005 and starring Daniel Craig and Gabriel Macht (Suits).
It's based on a novel I haven't read, so I'll say right off the bat I can't compare the two.Craig plays Fluke Kelso, a British history professor in Russia.
After lecturing about the evils of Stalin, he is approached by an old man who tells Kelso that he knows nothing.
When they track down her father, he has been murdered.Kelso and Zinaida, hounded by a TV reporter (Macht), then attempt to track down the notebook, translate it, and learn the secret.Actually filmed in Russia and Latvia, the scenery is amazing, and Daniel Craig is so good that one is willing to overlook an insane plot.
It's very much like the DaVinci code but doesn't quite get there.The script is okay but not great, and the characters are somewhat stereotyped, though Rednikova and Macht give good performances.
Craig is a brilliant actor and does a wonderful job.This film could have been a lot better, but as it is, it's interesting, well done, well acted, and holds one's interest.
And while Daniel Craig, looking gaunt, thin & very much the bookish professor was alright as the professor, it seemed just like an acting gig he took to go to Russia.
Yes, it was Russia and it was a hard story & the Russian characters had hard lives from the domino affect of Stalin, but there was absolutely no levity to transition from one scene to the next.
Daniel Craig does a wonderful job playing a determined journalist eager to make a buck; only to become so enthralled in his research that he soon began to forget about the potential money he would make by finally getting a hold of Stalin's lost memoirs and writing a book about it.In the end, we learn a startling truth.
Fluke Kelso (Daniel Craig) is an expert on Stalin.
He tells a shocking story that Stalin was killed by Soviet secret police chief Beria who then stole and buried Stalin's notebook.This TV movie is just pre-Bond.
You were dealing with characters that i met, lived with and drank with during my time in Moscow.I miss those characters and they were brought to life in the 90 minutes i spent watching the film.
The story line was a bit tough to follow though i didn't have the expectations of having read the novel and therefor was pleasantly surprised by the pace and interactions.Great movie in my opinion.
I recently watched the BBC's adaptation of Archangel, based on the Robert Harris novel.
Daniel Craig is fine here as academic Fluke Kelso, an expert in Stalin and modern Russian history.
Craig has some OK support in the form of Gabriel Macht, as an adventuring American journalist who hopes for the story of a lifetime, and in the pretty personage of Yekaterina Rednikova, who plays Zinaida, the call girl daughter of Papu (Valery Chernak), who as a young man bore witness to the suppression of Stalin's 'secret' when the dictator died.
With a surprising pace, Archangel developed a promising story, and continued to be interesting throughout the film, with a few moments of lazy writing.
Little Stalin's short speech en route to Moscow - watch his gloved hands - must be one of the cheesiest moments in the history of cinema.I hope that Russian actors had a good time participating in this silly production; I liked everyone involved, especially the memorable Communist honcho with a fake Russian last name - 'Mamantov' is really 'Mamontov', but who cares?
ARCHANGEL (the name of a northern Russian town that hides secrets the story discloses) is a film that is not without flaws both in script and in production, but it is a movie of intrigue that makes for a good night's adventure of escape...and political philosophizing.Dr. Fluke Kelso (Daniel Craig) is an American professor of history visiting Moscow to speak out against the persistent (though small) consistency who revere the dead Stalin and long for the Communist days of yore.
Along the line the obligatory television press correspondent, American O'Brian (Gabriel Macht) fast talks his way into participating in the chase and the strange group of men adamant to find the lost documents - a group led by Mamantov (Lev Prygunov) - attack and pursue the triad all the way to Archangel where the truths about Stalin's last days are made known: in flashbacks we see that Stalin (Avtandil Makharadze) had a lover Anna (Anna Gerasimova) who was impregnated by the dying Stalin and gave birth to a son Josef (Konstantin Lavroneko) who is just waiting for the right time to make Stalinist Communism rise again.
How all this intrigue resolves is the fairly impressive ending to the story.This may sound like a flimsy thread for a story but here it works, primarily due to the conviction of Daniel Craig as Kelso, Gabriel Macht as O'Brian and a cast of Russian actors who are very fine.
The Russian characters are consistent with people I have known.It would be interesting to know more about the background of the film.
Children of powerful, dominating leaders can have a charisma with the masses which can indeed be psychologically and politically compelling, and actor Konstantin Lavronenko was as convincing as he was chilling as the Young Joseph.The film is also extremely educational about what Stalinism was like and how it has haunted modern Russia ...
if less so, with time.Despite some recent attempts at Reversionism in Russia, I don't think neo-Stalinism is a threat there -- considering our past tradition and championing of humanitarianism and democracy, we became worse for a time -- but the film makes you think about what great historical evil was like and where it could head all of us.Lou Coatney.
Like Rifleman square in Riga, railroad bridge in Riga, but story is about not Riga:) Also the river, where Daniel Craig jumped to hide from Russian soldier is not located in Archangelsk.
A fine made-for-TV British thriller starring Daniel Craig, based on the even finer novel by Thomas Harris.
If movie thrillers can be thoughtful, literate and exciting -- and with no computer-created mega-explosions -- this fine British TV adaptation of the Robert Harris novel does the job.
Archangel stars Daniel Craig and was made before Craig hit the big time as James Bond.
It tells the story of British professor Fluke Kelso (Craig), a middle-aged man who had made a name for himself with impeccable research on Soviet history, concentrating on the life and career of Josef Stalin.
That will change dramatically when, at a Moscow symposium attended by other historians, he is approached by a coarse old man, Papu Rapava, with a story of the last hours of Stalin.
When Kelso and Zinaida finally locate the box and read the papers, they find themselves reading the stained and mouldering diary of a girl thrilled to leave her home in Archangel to go to Moscow and serve the great father, Stalin.
Nearly all of the cast is Russian, with the movie filmed entirely in Moscow and Riga, Latvia.
What makes Archangel work so well are the "what if" speculations by Robert Harris and Daniel Craig's fine performance.
***SPOILERS*** Interesting movie about an Amercan collage professor Fluke-named because he was a late born child-Kelso-named after 1960's 5 time horse of the year-played by Daniel Craig who uncovers a secret plan to return Russia into the hell that it was when Sovet dictator Josef Stalin, Avtandia Makhardze, ruled it with an iron hand.It's when Kelso runs into Papu Rapave, Valery Chernyak, at a Moscow restaurant that he finds out that Stalin though dead for over 50 years is now about to make his big move and take over the just freed from communism Mother Russia!
Kelso to let the world know the truth about Stalin's long planned second coming before he actually makes it and ends up, with WMD, not only destroying Russia but the entire world!
It's when Kelso hooks up with Rapava's hooker 27 years old estranged daughter Zinaida, Ekaterina Rednikova, that things start to crystallize in her father's, who was later murdered by pro-Stalin fanatics, hidden secret papers and diary in how this sinister and yes evil plan is supposed to be carried out!
The films surprise ending, which last for the entire last 30 minutes of the movie, does in fact shake you up but gets a bit overdone by being stretched out for so long.
Recap: Fluke Kelso is an American historian giving a lecture on Stalin in Moscow.
The notebook contains information leading to Archangelsk were a secret lies hidden that might threaten the fragile Russian democracy.Comments: Originally a miniseries of two one hour long parts that are put together to a movie.
The story is a classical treasure hunt, with hidden clues that need to be deciphered and followed to another clue that eventually leads to the treasure, albeit is set in recent times in Russia.
I actually had to check on some persons and events to see what was true, what could be true and what was fiction.If you're interested in recent history or political thrillers, this is probably something you might want to watch.
I am guessing that if this story about Stalin's biological child isn't exactly real, it is as true as any history about any important types of people from along time ago (and present day as well as what is truth any hows?).
Daniel Craig stars as a history professor specializing in the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union.
A surprisingly good book-to-movie adaptation.
This adaptation from the Robert Harris book is positively good and the director has stayed faithful to Harris' story.Daniel Craig shines as Professor "Fluke" Kelso, a British history professor based out of New York, a "specialist in all things Stalin".
Trying to resurrect a struggling career, Kelso meets an old man who claims he was present the night in 1953 when Stalin died.
The old man leads Kelso to Stalin's secret notebook but is then brutally murdered in his apartment.
The notebook leads Kelso, the old man's daughter, and an American reporter O'Brien, to a forest in the northern city of Archangel where secrets from the Soviet past are hidden.
The present-day Russian government sends special forces commandos with orders to make sure that the secrets in Archangel stay hidden but the past breaks free in one bloody battle and sets events in motion which ensures that history has a good chance of repeating itself...An excellent movie.