Citizen K

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.

In case anyone out there was under the impression Russia and its long-serving leader Vladimir Putin were squeaky clean world players, Citizen K should do a fairly solid job of showcasing why the country and its president have long been one of the shadiest operators around.

Directed by Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, Citizen K is not a ground-breaking doco or an exploration of new or jaw-dropping information but its a film that features the usual Gibney polish and editing prowess that has seen him become one of the most respected directors in his field.

Delving into the life and times of one of Russia's most wealthiest businessman turned prison inmate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who against all the odds became an icon of sorts for the steady follower's of the anti-Putin movement, Citizen K crams a lot of content into its two hour run-time as we explore Mikhail's rise up the ranks in the Russian business community and his up and down relationship with those in charge of his country.

Now in exile in the U.K, Khodorkovsky acts as a cold but intelligent central figure to Gibney's expose, offering up raw and honest insights into his backstory and the current predicament he finds himself in but the film works best when its focused on Putin himself, who while remaining mysterious and hard too read, makes for a fascinating subject as Gibney details his stunning journey to power that has now lasted well over 18 years.

One almost wishes Gibney had chosen to allot more time to Putin's side of this story, as for many outside of Russia it's hard to understand the true sentiment around the polarizing leader and how many of Russia's everyday citizens feel about the man that has pulled them along to become the powerhouse they are today, but at what long-lasting detriment for the future years ahead? The future where Russia and Putin will no longer go hand in hand.

You can almost sense Gibney wrestling with himself throughout Citizen K, understanding Khodorkovsky's story alone wasn't enough to build this feature around, the film at times feels torn in regards to what it wants to achieve, even if its at all times a solidly and thoughtfully put together piece.

Final Say -

As always Gibney delivers a well-made documentary with Citizen K but there's nothing here of a long lasting nature, just further evidence around Russia's shady operations and a want to know more about its mysterious central figure.

3 Blueberry Hill renditions out of 5

While the quality of production and use of clips are very good here, it is hard to find much cohesiveness. The overwhelming sense you come away with is that a bunch of corrupt men with half the wealth of Russia were bough to heel by a strongman president. It is easy to see why Putin is popular after the Russian brush with capitalism was so disastrous. Any sympathy for the main character being built through his prison battles is lost the instant he announced he has smuggled £500m out of the country before he left.

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 gives a general history of Russia from 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union, through the turbulent 1990's and the rise of the oligarchs, to 2018, after a couple of decades of Vladimir Putin progressively asserting an iron grip over the country. Citizen K is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of those oligarchs and a man who came in to direct conflict with Putin when he began looking into politics and espousing democratic ideals. He was shipped off to a remote prison for a decade as a result, and speaks from London where he went after being released. While the documentary skates along and doesn't go incredibly deep, it communicates the events and the dynamic between the two men and those around them reasonably well. Its use of archival footage and interviews is solid, though offset by a soundtrack that's overly dramatic and annoying.

Khodorkovsky was a predatory capitalist and while he ironically became a better person in prison, I think director Alex Gibney should have asked him point blank about his possible involvement in the murder of a local politician in 1998, as well as pointed questions about his vast wealth. For example, Khodorkovsky points out a time when he "had" to force workers to take a 30% pay cut, and another time when he let tens of thousands of them go. The question is not put to him, gee Mikhail, at the time you were worth over $1B and along with six other guys had half of Russia's wealth; if you cared for these people why didn't you take these losses out of your massive profits? Too often we see him get away with smirking through his statements and painting himself in a positive light, even if I am happy that he now leads the Open Russia movement and is a staunch critic of Putin. In the film's defense, the fact that Russia was torn between oligarchs like him and the monster that is Putin, men who combined corruption and violence to preserve wealth and power, does comes through. The dynamics are suitably depressing, particularly when you see the parallels to other countries in the behavior of the ultra-wealthy, or political strongmen who stir up nationalism as one of their methods of attaining power.