warmed-over cold war cliches

All obligatory anti-communist propaganda aside, these facts still stand:

-The Soviet Union and its media kept any mention of the serial killer or his actions quiet since such things "only occured in decadent, Western cultures."

-Chikatilo was convicted for having killed more people than even the Green River Killer, the most prolific serial killer in American history.

-The police tried to capture the serial killer by raiding the homes of known sex offenders, homosexuals, and mentally ill people, and got multiple people to confess to crimes they didn't commit through torture (which our glorious President Bush also thinks is an effective measure).

To me, the real problems resulted from the government's cruel, totalitarian measures, combined with their zealous nationalism and refusal to face the facts. It's sad to see the United States quickly moving in the same footsteps.

I think you have to make distinctions between the types of corruption involved. In the early parts of the film, it's not so much corruption as obstruction, because the enormity of the crime is not one that the Party wished to admit. Fairly evidently latterday corruption is of the more common for-personal-gain variety, but doesn't arise in the film.

I don't see it as a film vilifying either the new or old Russia, the whole point that I took away from it was that it can happen anywhere, regardless of governance, and one can be more or less ready to deal with it dependant on the frequency of new cases and crimes. Nor do I see it as making judegements about the general effectiveness or otherwise of Soviet/Russian policing - it's just a film about 1 case....

I can see the point you're making and to a small extent I agree, but I don't think this turns the film into a propaganda piece by any means. One of the many things I like about this film is that it manages to be more about the characters (Fetisov, Burakov and Chikatilo in particular) than the Soviet system.

Joss Ackland's character is a bit of a cliche, I realise that, but then I'm sure there were characters similar to him within the Soviet bureaucracy.

I couldn't agree more, it was cold war cliche after cliche after cliche... It's a shame because it really overshadowed what could be a good movie.

Am I the only one that get aggravated when people from Russia or France or Italy or wherever always speak English in movies produced in America? It was painful listening to "soviet communists" speaking the "enemy" language. Same happened in "The messenger" where Joan of Arc screams "english" at the British.

An award-winning BBC documentary team produced a string of superb documentaries, about "The Fall of Yugoslavia", "The Fifty Year War" (Between Israel and its neighbours) and "Messengers from Moscow" (about the demise of the USSR). The third one - probably the least well known of the three series - like the others tells the "story" by combining newsreel footage with "talking head" interviews with the major players in the events. The "Metadata" revealed by the BBC documentary is that briefly, after the USSR imploded and transformed into something different under Putin, is that for a short while things really DID change. Otherwise, we'd never have got candid interviews about recent Soviet history with senior figures from the KGB. As THEY saw it, the West was no longer "the enemy"... so why NOT talk about things? It's as if Soviet life switched - for a short while - from rigidity to become malleable, before changing to a new configuration and regaining its former rigidity.

Certainly, although corruption is widespread across the world, the old USSR was one of the few places where criminal investigation was carried out by two different organisations depending on the political influence wielded by the perpetrator. For "ordinary citizens", the Militia would deal with the matter... but if the perpetrator turned out to be a party member, then the matter became "Political", and had to be deal with by the KGB. In some ways, reminiscent of the Victorian London of Jack the Ripper. London is policed by the UK's biggest police force, "the Metropolitan Police"... except that the ancient "City of London" has its own police force, and "the Met'" has no powers within the City of London. Jack the Ripper's murders took place right on the border between the two areas. Chikatilo's murders took place "on the border" between ordinary citizens and party members.

You are a ridiculous ass, Fileboy. You're either utterly ignorant about how the Soviet Union operated, or you're a leftist fanboi.

The reason why those cliches exist is because they are based on FACT - unlike anything you said. I have no idea how liars like you live with yourselves, except that you have as much of a conscience as the serial killer in this movie.

I find it amusing that communists within the US or those who sympathize with them often rely on this cheap tactic of posturing as someone that is neutral and unbiased in their opinion. The way you love bashing the American Justice departments, while downplaying the corrupt/inept/radical elements of Soviet justice system tells me everything I need to know about you. You are a typical leftist.

Do you mean that bastion of honesty George Ryan who was indicted and convicted on charges included racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering and tax fraud?