Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This picaresque masterpiece deserves 5 stars. The 2 and 1 stars are incompetent or irrelevant and drag down the score. I've read histories of Stalin and of his death. As outrageous as this story seems, it is essentially true. The main points are accurate. The characters, from Khrushchev to Malenkov to Molotov to Beria, are accurate. As a group they were buffoons who, in order to survive, had for years played Stalin's buffoons to keep him amused. The acting is perfect, the settings are perfect, the dialog is in keeping with the documented profanity, vulgarity and ruthlessness of Stalin's circle. What we are seeing is the transition from Stalin's surrealistic reign of terror to relative sanity, and the transition is played as the next step from tragedy—comedy. Brilliant comedy.