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East-West
Sony Pictures Classics


9.0

based on 27 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence and brief sensuality

Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Catherine Deneuve, and Sergei Bodrov Jr

In 1946, Stalin invites Russian expatriates to return to the motherland. A promise of open arms turns into a situation where many of them are shot or imprisoned. This film follows the story of a young family from France.

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Sergei Bodrov Louis Gardel Rustam Ibragimbekov Régis Wargnier
DIRECTED BY:	Régis Wargnier
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 3, 2000 Video: October 3, 2000 Theatrical: April 7, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	120 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Spain / Russia / France / Bulgaria
LANGUAGE(S):	French / Russian (with English subtitles)

Also known as "Est-Ouest"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

A grand, old-fashioned movie of spies and Communist repression.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Has the sensibility of a Hollywood "woman's picture" of the '40s -- the weepie saga of a married woman trapped in an untenable situation.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Takes the most somber of predicaments, and makes it involving, romantic and ultimately intensely suspenseful.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Wargnier's sumptuous, moving new film, captures both the hope of the returning Russians and their brutal betrayal.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

One of the unique virtues of the cinema is its ability to bring history to life with engrossing detail and gripping immediacy; East-West does this.

Portland Oregonian Diana Abu-Jaber

With its fiery tone and fierce intensity, East-West offers a profile of a country suspended in fear as well as of one woman's indomitable passion for freedom.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Has great themes and great actors.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The two-hour film never feels a minute too long.

Time Richard Schickel

This complex, heartbreaking film recounts the brutal struggle of one couple to survive.

TV Guide Stephen Miller

It's Deneuve, in little more than a cameo, who commands your attention and doesn't release you until she's good and ready.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Isn't always easy to sit through, but it repays patience. It's an honorable film, and it earns its undertow of poignancy derived from.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie as a whole lacks the conviction of a real story. It is more like a lush morality play, too leisurely in its storytelling, too sure of its morality.

Village Voice Leslie Camhi

Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Packed with melodrama, and often it works in the passionate, easy-to-watch manner of an old-fashioned "woman's film."

Variety Derek Elley

Too often caught between trying to be a sweeping period drama and intimate love story at the same time, with a script that's never fully satisfying on either count.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Wargnier directs his French historical drama, a foreign film Oscar nominee, in a way that allows little perspective on the extent of Stalinist cruelty; even when terrible things happen, they do so sedately.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Wargnier chooses a sweeping title and a sweeping topic, then turns everything into half-baked melodrama, heavy on over-the-top emotion but light on subtlety and ideas.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Although it's interesting and well-performed, East-West never locates its crux: It's all over the map.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

It is well-made in an old-fashioned way, and its straight-arrow lack of cynicism may be old- fashioned as well.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

By the time the movie ends, having traversed numerous plot twists and character revelations, the viewer is emotionally drained in a bittersweet sort of way.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Stodgy storytelling and a hyperbolic score reduce their experiences to melodrama.

Film.com Peter Brunette

Wargnier is also a lousy storyteller who seems not to understand how to shape a narrative.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

The film looks great, but Wargnier is so heavy-handed in his portrayal of postwar Russia that it casts suspicions on the film's reliability as history.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Director Regis Warginer ("Indochine") lets his film degenerate into a turgid melodrama.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Yoon Min C. gave it an 8:
A rare Western European film about the evils of Soviet Union under Stalin--understandable considering most European filmmakers have been of the Left--, it starts as superior schlock but develops into a genuinely moving story about the power of love and devotion. While some of the plot devices are cliched the movie attains depth in the final segment when the true qualities of some of these brave souls are revealed. A vision of society where love and trust can't be exhibited beyond party dictates but still burn furtively within the human heart confronts us with both the tragedy and triumph of the human condition. While the depiction of Soviet life as drabby and threadbare is perhaps overdone, the film is quite subtle in showing the layers of deception and bond that develop among people who must lead double lives of official duty and blackmarketeering in human trust. The performances are uniformly fine, even magnificent in the case of Deneauve and quietly beautiful in the case of Menshikov. Some have questioned the veracity of the story; though alteration for sake of melodrama is a staple of filmmaking, anyone who knows anything about Stalinist Russia should know the nightmarish scenarios in the movie are merely a drop in the bucket of Stalin's blooddrenched utopian madness.

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East-West Sony Pictures Classics

East-West
Sony Pictures Classics