Review of Little Odessa

Little Odessa (1994)
Great Camera-work; Heady Content
30 November 2006
It's the camera-work which first impresses in this one. The shots are so well taken.

Roth is excellent, bordering on superb, and should win the Hugh Laurie Award for the best job done portraying (and sounding convincingly like) a 'north a-merican' by a Brit.

Are talents like Schell and Redgrave wasted? Hardly. More: their Russian is very good - something you wouldn't expect from a flick like this. Sometimes the language is almost overly simplistic but the accents are very good.

This is a taut thriller - a scary one - and there are scenes which may have you gasping because they're so stark. As in 'Casino was a Bugs Bunny movie'. Something like that. Is this good? That's another matter. A lot of this is lent by Roth's performance - he's a cold blooded killer and he plays it with more the poker face than Hopkins in Remains of the Day.

Denouement? Watch for it. When the movie's over you might miss the fact it's over. Is this a highly recommendable flick? Hard to say. Some excellent work here. But will you enjoy it? Benefit by it?

That's a much more difficult question.

PS. Hey IMDb! Stop correcting our spelling and giving us no chance to correct your incorrect corrections. Suggesting corrections is one thing; forcing them upon us is quite another.
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