Review: An Idealistic Young Attorney in Stalin's Soviet Union

Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors is a film about a young attorney who believes in the rule of law. He lives, unfortunately, at one of the worst possible times and places for such idealism: during Josef Stalin's purges of the 1930s. Yet the story's most deluded idealist isn't this fledgling prosecutor, a man naive enough to be shocked when he learns that an innocent prisoner is being tortured. It's the prisoner himself, who thinks Stalin might step in and fix things if only he knew what the local secret police have been up to. Even a Bolshevik can believe a version of Good czar, bad boyars. How Loznitsa's tale ends will not surprise a viewer with any knowledge of Soviet history. But it does come as a surprise to the protagonist, and the movie wrings genuine drama—and some very dark humor—from his path to an inevitable destination.