Burnt by the Sun
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Year Released: 1994
Rating: 1.5
Hero of the Stalinist revolution (Mikhalkov himself) enjoys spending time with his family, going to the lake and having steam baths - when an ominous Robert Downey Jr. look alike stops by (from the government!), you could say paradise is officially over. The one-dimensional storyline is aided a minor amount by the jubilant performances by Mikhalkov and his real-life daughter Anna, whose beaming innocence steals whatever there is of the show. The attempts at comedy, too, fail to have much of an affect - they consist of mostly over-exaggerated facial expressions. Remember, kids: Uncle Joe was a bad, bad man.
