I own this mainly because of Jeff Goldblum, so I wasn't expecting much in the way of real entertainment, but was more or less watching this for Mr. Goldblum's performance. I think he's one of the best actors in the business. I did not discover until after the fact that this film was based on actual events, and I had to go watch it again.
Aside from beautiful performances by all three principals, the story itself has a wonderful flow, which works brilliantly with the material and weaves a highly enjoyable experience.
This is an entertaining experience, but it also shows how desperate the Russians were to do something better for themselves, in spite of communist influences still in place. It also allows us a small peek into the corrupt offices of our own politicians...we already know they will do anything to get elected. This just proves those suspicions and marks them as "well known" and "public knowledge."
On a side note, I found this information here at IMDb and paraphrased it for those of you who are interested. "While the film portrays all three of the men in Russia during the whole campaign, our three consultants (Gorton-Goldlum, Dresner-LaPaglia, and Shumate-Shreiber) were in truth flying in and out over those five months, or so. They left one person in the US as a security precaution to ensure that the other two could leave when desired, and one younger member was left in Russia the whole time. Oddly enough, he was omitted from the movie. It was his notes they used to draft a screenplay, by the way.
The hotel portrayed in the movie was the "President Hotel," known as the "Oktiabraskaya" during Soviet Times. Each room in this hotel was equipped with gas masks, and the hotel compound was rumored to be secretly linked to the Moscow metro system for occupants to escape or guards and extra security to arrive. After the Yeltsin campaign, Gorton went on to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's political consultant, running Arnold's first campaign.
The furniture-stacking scene is something that really happened, and happened more than once. The consultants' paranoia is well founded. During the 1996 election cycle in Russia, the campaign manager for the mayor of St. Petersburg had acid thrown in his face, and the running mate for the mayor of Moscow was critically injured in a car bomb." As I said, those words were paraphrased, but they may allow you a little behind the scenes knowledge as to the origins of this movie. Insider info like that tends to help me embrace the work more. Hope it does the same for you.
All in all? It's not Friday/Saturday night viewing material by any means, but it IS better than a rainy Sunday's tedium relief.
It rates a 7.9/10 from...
the Fiend :.
