The Assassination Of Trotsky Details

Director Joseph Losey was not firing on all cylinders with this botched drama about the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was gruesomely murdered on Stalin's orders in Mexico City in 1940. Despite being shot on authentic locations, Losey's movie is often dull and fatally lacking in both historical perspective and on-screen drama, mainly because both Trotsky and his assassin are thinly drawn. Richard Burton acts his socks off as Trotsky, a role previously offered to Dirk Bogarde, Marlon Brando, George C Scott and Topol. However, while Alain Delon has a certain menace as the assassin, he's never a flesh-and-blood character. The film was a flop everywhere and initiated its director's long and slow decline following the triumph of The Go-Between.

Unhistorical evocation of Trotsky's last couple of months in exile in Mexico before the Stalinist agents got to him.... read more on Time Out