Archangel

Archangel TV movie, available on Hulu

Archangel stars Daniel Craig(pre-Bond) as a history professor of all things Stalin desperate to write another book and return to the heights of his previous popularity. He stumbles onto a plot to (at first) hide the birth of a son to Joseph Stalin. (Ok, spoilers start here)

In the end Craig is a tool of hard-line communists who are working hard to get back into power(this time by way of an election) and a Craig is needed to authenticate a young girl's diary(she bore little Joe to the old man).

The acting was fair. Craig with his clenched style of intensity... never really relaxing, Ekaterina Rednikova as a law-student(who sleeps with men for money to pay for school) is solid, and Gabriel Macht as a shady TV reporter is about as awful as his lines.

The primary issue I have is with the final 10 minutes of the movie. Craig has found little Joe Stalin is all grown up and as much of a psychopathic killer as his old man. A special forces unit is sent to the remote forest cabin to "erase any evidence." Craig and the TV reporter are some distance away by a lake seeking a way to escape when the troops arrive.

So here's the first issue. The troops stomp through the woods toward the cabin. An old man is outside(little Joe's "adoptive father") cutting firewood. Perhaps a dozen or so troops are there within sight of the old man, all armed with AK-47 (or similar) automatic rifles. One soldier fires... one round. Ok, that's odd. No double tap(one to the chest, one to the head), no follow up shot once he's on the ground. Nothing too major though.

Then the old woman(little Joe's "adoptive mother") runs out of the house shrieking. Now this part is just illogical. With the 12+ soldiers moving toward the now-dead old man and the cabin... who fires? The leader of the group... with a pistol. And he's further away than any of his troops. He shortly has a line to the effect that their orders were to leave no one alive. If that was the order why didn't one of the other soldiers fire? Why with the pistol? He was at a great enough distance and moving that a truly accurate shot would have been pretty difficult(but not impossible).

Ah, but it's an ambush. Shots are fired from off in the trees and several of the special forces troops fall dead. They return fire(not single shots, but in bursts as you would expect with their weapons). However, they hit nothing. Little Joe Stalin proceeds to kill all of the special forces troops with what appears to be a WWII or 1950's era Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle. They're solid rifles(I've shot one several times). But there is a logical inconsistency. If the troops are Russian special forces as they say, shouldn't they--with their superior training, weapons, and numbers--be able to deal pretty easily with a single man with a bolt-action rifle?

Craig and the TV reporter (understandably) are running for their lives back to the lake(where Crag had found a boat) with the leader of the special forces unit following. Ok, another problem. While engaged with an enemy with a weapon, the officer in charge abandons the primary operation to stalk off after two unarmed witnesses. Dumb. The TV reporter gets his leg caught in a bear trap(ouch!). Craig runs back and helps extract his leg.... allowing the special forces leader to get much closer. Now he's got one of those handy AK-47s in his hand. However, when he is close enough to shoot... what does he do? Fires only once! Boom, that's TV guy dead. But Craig is still in range... shoot! Nope. Craig runs off.

This gets to the last nit to pick. Craig in his haste to flee falls in the lake(looks cold) and swims to the dock where the boat is tied up. The leader guy walks out onto the dock--when he easily could have shot from the shore. Then he does something very odd. He cycles the action on the rifle.

Now for those of you not familiar with guns let me fill you in. Our villain has already shot at our intrepid hero. By design semi-automatic and automatic guns eject the spent shell and put another into the chamber... which is why they are called automatic. They automatically reload. So since the villain has fired there is a new unfired round in the chamber. Just pull the trigger and bang! But no. He cycles the action(which would actually dump a perfectly good cartridge on the ground).

So he wastes just enough time walking out on the dock and unnecessarily cycling the action... only to die from a shot from little Stalin. So little Joe has single-handedly wiped out a special forces unit with a bolt-action rifle. Uh, what?

So this three part cliche riven pile of tripe is worth a miss.