Why you can trust GamesRadar+
After winning the best foreign film Oscar for his '94 epic Burnt By The Sun, Nikita Mikhalkov spent the next five years working on this lavish period romance. Unfortunately, while it contains some undeniably spectacular scenes (a carnival on a frozen lake, a full staging of Rossini's The Barber Of Seville), not enough happens to justify the epic running time.
Set in Tsarist Russia, the story tells of an American (Ormond) who comes to Moscow to help a crackpot inventor (Harris) finance a radical tree-cutting machine. En route she meets a young cadet (Menshikov) who falls head over heels in love with her.
The director betrays the scale of his ambition by christening the soldier Tolstoy, but his uneasy mix of melodrama and slapstick is no classic. And while shooting the pic in English enables Ormond to sport a convincing Yankee accent, the lumbering screenplay gives her few lines worth speaking.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
The Inside Out 2 panic attack scene is one of the best depictions of anxiety ever – and something Pixar director Kelsey Mann is incredibly proud of: "I couldn't be happier"
When making Kingdom Hearts, the "one thing" RPG icon Tetsuya Nomura "wasn't willing to budge on" was a non-Disney protagonist
The Witcher fans in shambles after a new book reveals just how old Geralt really is