Word: renko
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Gorky Park keeps us on the edge or our seats for two hours as we watch Renko, played by William Hurt, solve the murders of three people in the center of Moscow, with their faces brutally carved off to erase their identities. The movie is very faithful to the book and depicts the complex plot convincingly, leaving out only the subtle intricacies that a book must describe successfully and changing the last scenes from New York to Stockholm...
...Renko is no simple good guy, but rather on ordinary Russian militia policeman who becomes a scapegoat for solving the murders, which reek of corruption and international extortion. Hurt portrays Renko as an apathetic officer who agrees to work on the case only until the KGB will take it away from him. But as he begins to piece together the lives of the victims, Renko becomes caught in the middle, realizing that if he solves the case, he will most like be murdered himself, but remaining reluctant to separate himself from the case's fascinating details...
...Hurt's Renko is spectacular, conveying his character's growing excitement with the murder through his increasingly sparkling eyes and his willingness to use illegal methods for exposing the corruption and violence used by his opponents. At the beginning. Hurt's Renko seems to amble through his investigation, but gradually he awakens to the vastness of the mystery, during which he falls desperately in love with one of the people involved in the murders. His splendid performance makes the movie glide off the screen, depicting the repressive, empty life a Russian might live...
...sultry good looks, Pacula proves as good an actress as she is beautiful. Irina, a young Siberian woman who desperately wants to leave Russia, was friends with the three murdered victims. Pacula inculcates a quiet desperation in her Irina, who against her will falls in love with the inquisitive Renko. She monopolizes the screen with her strikingly passionate Irina, and the love scene with Hurt stuns us with its erotic passion...
...conception of Russian life, with lines for food, crowded bars, simple homes and huge pictures of Lenin covering buildings. Russians are not stereotyped but depicted as ordinary people trying to survive in tightly controlled life styles. The ordinary scenes of Russian life are the natural home for characters like Renko, whose apartment is frugally furnished and whose office reeks of sweat and cigarette smoke...