Citizen K

It is interesting to witness how Putin's paranoia disproportionately grew with each passing year - from waging war against his opponents and critics, to a full scale aggression against another country. Great archival footage. The only problem is the overbearing soundtrack, at times so loud that it completely muffles the dialogue.

I literally had great difficulty hearing and understanding the soft spoken BBC reporter because the background music was so loud and intrusive.

This is a very disturbing trend in documentaries. Background music shouldn't override the actual content! Knock it off!

Otherwise, the documentary was very informative and avoided schizophrenic choppy cuts, which sadly are also trendy.

Watching this documentary was like having a deja-vu. Im romanian and living in an ex comunist country, we experienced the same savage so called capitalism in the '90s. Politicians in cahoots with some "smart" guys were able to "seize" a country. Im not pretending to be familiar with Khodorkovsky's affairs but i cant help not see some similarities for both Romania and Russia's. They were bribing, stealing or better said leeching the state's wealth. So before taking any sides on this production dig a little more on the '90s in Eastern Europe's transition economy from state owned to a market economy. These men werent saints

This documentary tells the story of K who went from intelligent young man, to money maker, to king maker to becoming a threat to the newly minted President Putin of Russia. How the Oligarchs called the shots in the regime of Yeltsin and how the smoke and mirrors techniques ensured that Yeltsin continued as the president and the rich Oligarchs continued to mint money and wield influence till Putin, an ex KGB man was suddenly pushed into power. He did not take long to grab real power from those who had brought him in and now threatens to be Preaident for life. 'No Russia without Putin' sounds ridiculous. Kafkasque is right. Similar stories abound in many other countries, notably India. Will the film makers consider making a film on that too?

Caught this at Hamptons festival last month. I wanted to let it settle in and do a bit of research before writing a review. I know who Khodorkovsky is and that he was one of the post-Soviet oligarchs who went afoul of Russian Dictator Putin, but not the timing and full detail.

Put is a dangerous scumbag and I am happy to say so, but this film has some serious problems as well. It really doesn't address the context, not eh absence of a working legal regime as well as the need for actual financial markets, and just gives an indictment of patriotism when the Khodorkovsky phenomena had nothing to do with capitalism, but rather was a simple looting of assets, compounded with a feedback loop of paid corruption of government, one sees in any system that doesn't have a legal and democratic framework. As far as the charges against him, his trial and imprisonment -- the viewer doesn't really get a sense for the film makers that both offenses can be true: the charging could have been politically motivated, due process could have been absent or flawed; but at the same time it is clear he was guilty of massive theft and crimes. Really if you want to understand this, read the findings of the European Court of Human Rights, which heard Khodorkovsky's appeal to that court, and which found that while there were process issues aplenty -- that the charges against him were well grounded. Now I am not saying the makers make an innocent hero out of Khodorkovsky, but rather that his crimes are kind of winked at in the film. I am also troubled by the way the term capitalism is thrown around in the film. Russia has never been capitalist. It sure wasn't capitalist or liaise faire when Khodorkovsky's garnered his supply cornering in oil fields. It was a gangster socialist government when it was socialist as the United Soviet Socialist Republics, a closed socialist system in 1993 when Khodorkovsky was Deputy head of Energy Ministry in the early 1990's, and he was enabled by the loan for shares that had nothing to do with capitalism or markets. In fact you have to be a careful viewer to even notice that the subject is a former Soviet Socialist government deputy minister and a creature created by Soviet socialism (as is Putin).

The Khodorkovsky story is important, as is what tells us about Putin, but I suggest reading some basic short pieces in WSJ, Financial Times or even the Guardian on him instead of this very incomplete, and at times glib, film