This British-American co-production offers a dramatised portrait of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) who was assassinated in 2006. Politkovskaya’s gutsy, impassioned reporting on the second Chechen war was highly critical of the Kremlin, the Russian army and Vladimir Putin personally. (The fact that she was murdered on his birthday was surely no coincidence.) Nineteen years after her death, she remains a folk hero worldwide for resistances to autocracy, especially given the rise in repression everywhere and constant threats to journalists.
Given all that, the film deserves respect for the subject matter, even though this is a pretty basic rendition of Politkovskaya’s story, a little too sticky with hagiographic sentimentality and the cliches of crusading journalist-led movies. It also should be noted that Politkovskaya’s family haven’t given the film their blessing; some of them may not be happy, for instance, with the thinly written characterisations of their fictional counterparts, like her son Ilya (Harry Lawtey) who is made to seem peevish and self-absorbed even when his feelings are understandable. (“I’m not watching you die!” he bellows at one point.)
