l have two different DVD movie about this most prolific serial killer Chikatilo and Citizen X is the best of them,drives force into a different view of forensic investigation,brings technically more specific things from the back-stages in a closed red country,the killer stay in second plan,it's quite clear in the beginning when the killer is introduced for audience,no secret at all,a powerful casting help to much the high pattern and the status of the movie,however has some disparate points that don't filled the blank according the documentary that come together in the DVD release.Resume: First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8

Very well presented in a believable way is this story of a serial killer in Russia. It probably could be happening anywhere one might find high ranking officials who refuse to allow a low level investigator the freedom and resources he needs to quickly find the murderer.Donald Sutherland is brilliant as a Russian Colonel who sidesteps and outwits some of his superiors in order to give his team a chance to succeed. The direction is straight forward. No special effects. Some make up and a bit of gore but just enough to make it real.I wonder how many times in history these kinds of political characters have let murders take place rather than admit to their own incompetence. Also the blaming of a particular sexual orientation for something unrelated.Highly recommended. I watched it at Amazon Prime but it might be at NetFlix or elsewhere. There might be a DVD.

The early Nineties saw a brief craze for serial killer movies, no doubt inspired by the commercial and critical success of Silence of the Lambs. This gem of a movie stands out from the crowd, aided by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the intriguing possibility of stories from behind the Iron Curtain being told for the first time.When reviewing Citizen X, one must be aware that this is based on an all-too-true story, and respect must be given to 50+ families who know that their children died in the worst circumstances imaginable: tortured, raped, and slashed to death by a man so monstrous, so bizarre, and so incomprehensible in his nature that even the hardbitten Soviets had no idea of what kind of person he might be or how to go about looking for him. In a way, that's what makes the movie work so well. You couldn't make up a character like Chikatilo in fiction, or convince an audience that he could get away with it for as long as he did. But the crimes were real.The movie opens straight and to the point with a body being found in the woods one night ... and then another ... and then more. Pretty soon, the local morgue is full, and police lieutenant Viktor Burakov (the excellent Stephen Rea) realises he has a case on his hands that will test the system, and himself, to the limit. We quickly figure out that Viktor will have to fight the clunking Soviet system as hard as he fights the killer. Stephen Rea has a hell of a job on his hands here as an actor; it would be difficult to think of a more difficult character to build sympathy with than a Soviet-era murder detective. But somehow he manages to humanise Burakov, and by the end the audience are rooting for him. I note with interest that the Wachowski Brothers cast him in a similar role in "V for Vendetta" and, again, he nearly stole the show from A-list headliners Nathalie Portman and Hugo Weaving.The movie also successfully takes a gamble in showing us who the killer is fairly early on (rather than rely on a "whodunnit" structure) and we are rewarded the opportunity to delve into his psyche. We get to see an average day in the life of Andrei Chikatilo (Jeffrey DeMunn in the toughest and most thankless role he will ever play.) DeMunn has hypnotically large, sad, brown eyes that disarm the viewer just as easily as the real life Chikatilo did. Serial killers come in two basic varieties: the low-IQ and high-IQ type. Chikatilo was a textbook example of the second. A trusted, respected, high functioning member of society, fairly harmless looking, the last person you would suspect of wrongdoing. And yet something uncontrollable deep in their psyche (in Chikatilo's case, sexual impotence combined with the humiliation of his humdrum job) makes them kill. To feel powerful and in control, for just that moment.In fact, DeMunn builds such compelling sympathy for his devil that it's almost painful to watch him finally fold under police questioning and admit, almost to himself as much as the rest of the world, who he really is and the unspeakably savage murders he has committed. The fact that the movie takes place in the mighty, mysterious and secretive Soviet Union is a constant source of interest to the audience. Everything from the architecture to the way people talk to each other is new and different to Western eyes. The fact that a murder case has a "Political Officer" assigned to it seems insane to us, but would not have raised an eyebrow in a regime where controlling how people think, irrespective of the facts before their eyes, was sadly part of daily life. To admit that even one man could become so alienated and unchecked in a society where everyone was supposed to be helping (or more accurately, watching) each other was to admit to failings of the Soviet Union and perhaps communism as a whole.Several intriguing forensic aspects of the case are presented, but luckily the director keeps the focus on Lt. Burakov and Chikatilo's cat-and-mouse game, and prevents the movie becoming like a police procedural drama. The movie does point out that the Soviet cops were all too quick to blame that homosexual community for these bizarre murders, despite the fact that the killer clearly preferred girls over boys. (The real life story is even more bizarre. Chikatilo actually handed himself in to the police and confessed his crimes just a few years into his reign, but the police refused to believe him on the grounds that they had already convicted and executed someone else for them.)"Citizen X" is a great example of the kind of film that is sadly no longer made anymore: the $20 - $30m thriller with unusual and risky subject matter, a unique and inimitable premise, and punchily delivered by skilled and dependable actors.

TV movie above average, where the performances are acceptably good (taking for granted that the casting is not Russian nor Slavic) and the relations between them are fine too. Slow but safe rhythm, good ambiance of the soviet times in, in this case, Rostov na Donu. It shows some problems of that time and situation, the secrets and the need for being close and be capable of show great competence and look to big men of the Party.I would have like they had dug deeper in the figure of Andrei Chikatilo, Rostov's Butcher, which is lightly represented in the film, how I said the film is more focus on relations between, Rea and Sutherland.Random fact, thrash band Slayer (poor Hannemann) wrote a song based on this disgusting man called "Psychopathy Red".