This gutless film put me to sleep. Basically, it’s boring in the first half, and REALLY boring in the second half. Waiting for Tolstoy to kick the bucket is agonizing. Everyone is blubbering and trying to act all broken up, but none of it rings true. In fact, it’s all really irritating. At one point in the middle of all this, I commented to my wife “God, how much longer do we have to wait before he dies!” Then I immediately did the computation: 20 minutes! Good lord! When he finally croaks, the film fizzles out in a swell of generic music and an endless procession of ridiculous long faces, but I felt happy (that is was over.)

The reason it’s all so excruciating is that they didn’t write any dialog to show you what a cool guy Tolstoy was, or why people loved him. Well, they wrote a little dialog, but it was pathetically inadequate. Instead, they were content to keep tossing out the same few ideas over and over. “The Countess doesn’t understand her husband’s work. She wants to destroy everything,”  How many times do we have to hear that line?  “My position in the house has become intolerable,”  says Tolstoy (at least ten times.) A little slow, isn’t he? Then the very next second, he looks happy as a clam, fucking his (still very attractive) wife of 46 years. “Lev Tolstoy’s works belong to the people of Russia …” Yeah, yeah, yeah – you hear it once and you’ve got it. This is not dialog, this is the fine art of soundbites.

They go on and on about who is a “good Tolstoyan,” but they can’t be bothered to talk in any depth about what that even means. They just keep saying “Tolstoy’s all about love.” Yeah? Then why are all his followers a bunch of joyless and insufferable freaks and weirdos? The movie can’t seem to get interested in answering that. Tolstoy keeps saying “Our material wealth disgusts me.” This does not make for an interesting movie, just farting out these lines as if they are profound. This film has nothing to say – that’s really its problem. The film exists to chronicle (in its second half) the ridiculous train ride and Tolstoy’s protracted death, and the first half of the film is just a place holder to get to the second half. Sorry, but that’s how I see it.

Then there is the film’s “comedy.” The whole James Mcavoy sneezing thing was stupid the first time they did it. But to perpetuate it through the entire movie smacks of desperation. They even pull out the very tired concept of the guy who can’t “hold his load,” and they have poor Helen Mirren utter the line “I’m still your little chicken, and you’re my big cock!” Ugh.

I can’t believe they gave Christopher Plummer an Academy Award nomination for this. I have always been a big fan of his from all the way back in the 1970’s, but this has to be one of his worst performances. James Macavoy (another wonderful actor) is okay, but he has very little to do and frankly his character as written is a little ridiculous. Paul Giamatti’s character is just a creepy, small-minded, sycophantic asshole, but the film seems to treat him and Tolstoy’s cool wife as equally admirable. What the fuck is that all about?! This film can’t be bothered to take a side on anything! That’s why it’s so fucking dull. Helen Mirren deserved a purple heart for appearing in this movie.

As a final note, it’s just damn weird to have this story about Russians and have all these Brits in it, acting very, very British-like. It just didn’t work very well.

I say: skip it.