Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Cem Lamb This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

HotToastyRag I really don't know why anyone would want to watch this movie, unless you're a Russian history buff and particularly wants to watch a movie about the end of Trotsky's life. I'm not spoiling anything; it's in the title! Richard Burton plays the doomed titular character, but besides wearing glasses and a goatee, he doesn't really do much to try and convince the audience he's Russian.Trotsky is living in Mexico, and through Stalin's orders, a young man is faced with the task of assassinating him. Who wants to watch that? Throw in a non-exciting romance, random Trotsky rants, and a disgusting bullfight after which the bull is chopped up into little bits, and you have a pretty lousy movie.

blanche-2 For a film that makes "100 Worst Films Ever Made" lists, The Assassination of Trotsky certainly is getting good reviews on this site. Not from me, though.Joseph Losey was an interesting director in that sometimes he was fantastic, as in The Servant and Mr. Klein, and sometimes he just missed the boat.He offered Trotsky to Dirk Bogarde, who hated the script and still didn't take it after Losey told him it would be rewritten. He offered Richard Burton the same script and the same promise. I'm certain that Losey didn't lie, but if this was a rewritten script, I'd hate to have seen the previous one.The film, however, does present a fairly accurate portrayal of Trotsky in exile in Mexico during the final months of his life in 1940 and has some artistic touches, most notably, the disturbing bullfight that parallels the actual assassination. Both were gruesome, but the bullfight was revolting and I had to fast forward through most of it. Kudos to Losey for showing what bullfights are really like, however.The film contains little dialogue, with the exception of Trotsky's dictation. Alain Delon, who received top billing, wears a beige suit and big sunglasses, looking like a silent Italian model while Romy Schneider screams at him. Also I swear to God that sometimes he was dubbed and sometimes he wasn't, as his voice sounded different in different scenes. The acting of Delon and Burton at the end of the film is fantastic. The way Mercader (Delon) is portrayed, he is unable to kill Trotsky at his first opportunity, and finally, after hesitation manages to do it, although clumsily. In real life he was a Stalin fanatic, dispatched in fact by Stalin to kill Trotsky, but this isn't shown in the movie. The characters are not fleshed out at all, which makes any connection to the happenings difficult.In real life, Mercader served 20 years in a Mexican prison. Upon release he eventually returned to Russia, where he was honored as a hero. He divided his time between Cuba and Russia until his death in 1978.For me this film did not hang together, and there was no character development. The script needed more detail. At 103 minutes, there was definite room for some character expansion and background.

esteban1747 Stalin hated Trotsky for many reasons, one among them is that Lenin in his famous testament strongly criticized Stalin as a tough and badly educated leader while recognized Trotsky as the most intelligent politician among the Bolcheviks. In that way Trostky was a kind of impediment for Stalin to seize the whole power in Soviet Union. The party trusted Stalin and the first thing he did was to start a snare campaign against Trotsky among the high bosses of the party as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who finally supported Stalin in this deed. As a result Trostky was declared a traitor and expelled from USSR, living first at the border of USSR, then in Turkey and finally in Mexico. He continued writing and had an increased number of people following him, a fact enough for Stalin to order his assassination. To this end Stalin and his KGB tools used Mexican communists led by the famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. They attempted to kill Trostki once unsuccessfully, then decided to change for another way, i.e. to introduce the agent Jacques Mornard, who in fact was not from Belgium as he claimed to be, but Spanish citizen Ramón Mercader del Río, son of mother born in Cuba. Mornard or Mercader finally killed Trostky, but not his ideas. In fact Stalin made a big mistake because trostkism increased and gained a lot of popularity in several countries after the death of Trostky. The present film is just an effort to show something of this fatal happening, but it is not the best in my opinion. There is no introduction to Trostki, how he was expelled from USSR, why this happened, how he arrived in Mexico. Not knowing the history, it will be very difficult to guess that Stalin was behind this assassination. The relationship of Trostki with some communists, as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is neither shown at all. The role of Trostky is played well by Richard Burton although he looked fatter than the real Trostky, but Alain Delon as Mornard or Mercader did not play this role convincingly. Mercader was a Stalinist fanatic, and this characteristic is not seen in the role played by Delon. He looked as schizophrenic rather than a man with political convictions.

Pellaeon4 The subject matter was the only saving factor for this movie, but the quality was hardly befitting of such a story and man. Historiographically the movie stayed true to facts or that is, the facts accepted by Nicholas Mosley, the screenwriter. Mosley had published a book of the same title the same year as the production of this movie. They claim in the opening scene to portray the facts as closely as possible and those that are ambiguous they leave open, but the assassination of Trotsky is surrounded by mystery and speculation. I've come to understand that the only piece of hard evidence agreed upon by all, is that Trotsky died at the end.Disappointingly the movie tends to leave out or vaguely use interesting details related to the incident, which makes the movie somewhat confusing to those who have no previous knowledge of the event. And that would be my advice, that one should look into the topic independently after seeing this movie in order to better grasp such a historically significant event. In terms of acting and plot I don't believe the movie pays it justice.