Watch Chekist For Free

the audience applauded

Pretty Good

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Oh, what can I say here? Do you want to watch sikly green-yellow-gray movie with tons of gore, unnecessary nudity, with a total lack of any decent plot, with awful actors' performance, with terrible message, with inbearable thiving on brutality, with all the possible Russian 1990's cliches and twists? You got it - Chekist is probably one of The Worst and Unnecessary Movies ever made. Shallow, sick, awfully executed mess. I cannot even say more - serious filmmakers maybe have to watch this as an example of how Not to make films.

I can understand why this sort of film might impress some Western audiences, but it is really just one example of the sort of preachy trash that passed for political and historical commentary in the Russia during the nineties.What does this movie consist of? Scene after scene of "to the firing squad" followed by executions in the dungeons. Moral of the story: commies bad, innocent victims good/not bad. 0 stars for plot, character development, conflict, resolution and 1 star for showing lots of dead bodies. Positively Dostoyevskian ... or is it Chekhovian? If you've never seen dead bodies, evil commies or innocent victims on screen, maybe this movie is for you. But then you are probably a child and have no business watching this stuff.As for the film's message, it's even less interesting than the story. The Russian Revolution and the rest of Soviet history were multifaceted phenomena, surprising though it may be. Showing clichéd Chekists working the meat-grinder is not a serious comment on a complex era. Contrary to some of the reviews, the movie does not portray terror in a realistic way. The film might seem "brutally realistic" in style, but it is heavy-handedly sentimental in substance. The repeated bloodletting is simply there for dramatic effect, to pummel the audience into fogetting to look into the actual history and mood of those times.The Chekists, along with millions of other people, were participating in a very real and vicious civil war. That war would shape the course of world history. But according to this "realistic" movie, the Chekists simply popped out of nowhere and decided to set up an extermination camp. One would do well to remember that all that seems "realistic" is not necessarily real. Is a little context too much to ask for here? In WWII films, even the Gestapo is portrayed as fighting actual military threats. In short, the movie has neither style nor substance. To call it anticommunist propaganda would be too charitable, as that would imply at least some attempt at a historical or political analysis of Communism. Fortunately, Rogozhkin has since moved on to suitably shallower topics such as hunting, fishing and vodka with his newer work.

This movie is definitely one of the darkest views on the Red Terror genocide that took place in 1918-1921 in Russia. Totally gripping and shocking as it can be...My opinion is that this movie reveals more historic facts than any other such movies about genocide(Schindler List,Hotel Rwanda) and unlike Hollywood sappy crap,this has no sentimental characters,only the bloody and merciless face of Russian revolution. Actors play is absolutely realistic,execution scenes are deeply disturbing.Probably the most shocking Russian film in years(even more shocking than 4) If you want to have an unforgettable evening,see it...it will stick in your mind for a long time! Rogozhkin should have stick up with this kind of movies...not like he does now,about Russian hunting and vodka bar.

A small Russian town in the early 1900's is the backdrop for this deeply disturbing film about a group of communist revolutionaries called the cheka-men who spend their days rounding up their political rivals for execution.The majority of the film takes place inside the basement of a charnel house. We are witnesses to execution after execution as people are killed with rapid expediency and professionalism. Men, women and children are forced to strip, stand against a wall, and then are shot. When the dead are removed, five more are brought in and the atrocity is committed again.There is not a moments reprieve from the brutality as director Rogozhkin plants the camera and the story inside that basement. I found his examination of the assassin's mindset most interesting. Early on, the cheka-men seem indifferent to their jobs, but as the film winds down, we see that all the killing has slowly begun to erode their very souls.Igor Sergeyev is amazing as the ambitious chekist who finds himself caught up in a machine of death that he helped to create and slowly losing his mind.The film is like passing a car accident on a highway, it's horrible and you might not like what you see but you can't take your eyes off of it. A disturbing film that is hard to forget.