**SPOILER** True story of Iavn Sanshin, Tom Hulce, who became Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin's, Aleksandr Zbruyev, personal film projectionist and, in his mind, close and personal friend. It's during the turbulent years of WWII that Ivan got to know Stalin and his henchmen like the head of the infamous NKVD-erroneously referred to in film as the KGB-Lavrenty Beria, Bob Hoskins. In fact the KGB replaced the NKVD in 1954 a year after Baria's death and fifteen years after the events in the movie "The Inner Circle" were to take place.Ivan working his way up the ladder as a Soviet KGB officer, in the field of communications, gets more and more detached from his wife Anastasia, Lolita Davidovich,that leads her to almost leave him. Swearing blind and total obedience to his great leader Comrade Stalin Ivan overlooks the horror that Stalin, and his Commie thugs, have brought upon the Russian people as well as nation. It's when Ivan gets Anastasia a job as a waitress to the Soviet bigwigs that he learns how evil and despicable they really are. This later leads Anastasia to hang herself leaving a distraught Ivan, who had told her he loved Comrade Stalin more then herself, to rethink his misplaced and fanatical love for "Uncle Joe" Stalin and his Socialist Soviet Peoples Republic; or in short USSR. Still under the spell of the "Great Liberator" and "Man of the People", as well as every boys and girls best friend, Joseph Stalin Ivan soon comes in contact with 17 year old Katya Gubelman, Bess Meyer whom he hasn't seen in over ten years. Katya as an infant was sent away to a KGB orphanage after her parents-Ivan's next door neighbors-were accused and sent to Siberia for secretly working and spying, by going on a trip abroad, for the Capitalists.Even though Katya-like Ivan-is a fanatical follower of the Russian Dictator, she thinks he's cute, it's very obvious that she's been brainwashed, at the KBG orphanage, and is too young and impressionable to see the truth behind the man. There's nothing good or decent as well as patriotic about Stalin at all! In fact he's one of the biggest mass murderers in recorded history who's victims far outnumber even those of Adolph Hitler! And on top of all that it's Stalin, or his underlines, who's responsible for the deaths, in a Siberian Soviet gulag, of Katya's own parents!It took a long while for Ivan to come to realize what his devotion to Stalin and the rotten and corrupt system, Stalinist Communism, that he represented did not only to himself but to the tens of millions of Russians, like Katya, who blindly and almost religiously worshiped him.This dark period in Russian history came crashing down to an end on March 5, 1953 when the "Great Patriotic Leader" of the Soviet Union-Joseph Stalin-quietly passed away in his sleep at the ripe old age of 73. At Stalin's state funeral millions of Russians tried to get a last glimpse of the Soviet Dictator, with hundreds being crushed to death in the process, as he lie in state in the "Hall of Soviet Heros" inside the Kremlin. It was some three years later that Stalin was exposed to the Russian people, as well as entire world, as the madman and murderous psycho that he really was by non-other then his former Ukrainian butt-kisser, who carried out some of Stalin's worst atrocities, and now new-in 1956-leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev.After lying in state next to the founder, and fellow Commie thug, of the USSR the mummified Vladimir Lenin Stalin's body, on Khrushchev's direct orders, was removed from its place of honor and buried in a common and unmarked grave outside the Kremlin walls. So much for the "Great Liberator" of the Russian people who, according to his propaganda ministry, watched over them like a sweet and kindly old gardener lovingly watches over, and nurtures, his prized tulips roses and lilies! P.S Aleksandr Zbruyev's, the Russian actor playing Joseph Stalin in the movie, father Victor who was a vice-minister of communications in the USSR back in the 1930's was arrested and convicted for being a Capitalist spy in 1937 a year before Aleksandr was born. After Victor's staged show-trial, that lasted just 15 minutes, he was taken outside the courtroom and executed within the Kremlin walls.

I saw this movie in the 90s and there were no more than 10 people inside the cinema and the movie did impress me at that time. then i watched it again few days ago and i can only confirm my first impression. it gives a true and realistic view on what stalinism was with that feeling of terror and madness that permeates the entire movie. Hulce, Davidovich and Hoskins deliver a great performance. It is an almost unknonw movie that rivals with blockbusters such as Schindler's list without suffering any inferiority complex. We celebrate the holocaust day every year but we don't know much about stalinism and its atrocities. this movie opens the door and it does it greatly. watch it!

As an armchair historian who's read dozens of book on Stalin and the Soviet Union under his control, I was fascinated by this movie. A great cast helps underscore the paranoia, backstabbing, and fear of the Stalinist system as seen through the eyes of a small-time player who's been thrust into a very dangerous circle.Hulce is terrific as the simple, hard-working Soviet citizen who wants nothing more than to believe in the system that dominates his life, yet he knows it's a system riddled with traps and monsters. Hoskins is equally good as the real-life monster Beria - Stalin's chief of state security and main hatchet-man.A highly underrated movie.

There are a myriad of insightful techniques in this film that reveal themselves with repeated viewings. The recurring images of cows being led to slaughter are my favorites. A great tale of a horrible situation.That being said, I did not appreciate Russians speaking English with Russian accents. I compare it to the way the DeNiro film "Stalin" dealt with language. Ethnic Russians spoke with very proper British accents, ordinary Russians with common English accents, and Stalin with a rough accent, using simple language, that was hard to place. I also found Tom Hulce's performance to be excessively maudlin. The sense of irony that all the other characters seemed to have was absent in his.