Navalny (2022) review

For years now, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny - who started the (now-defunct) Anti-Corruption Foundation - has been a major enemy for the Kremlin and, in particular, President Vladimir Putin, who does not take kindly to criticism ... so when he finds himself very ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow - and eventually taken to a hospital in Berlin - it's clear "someone" was trying to murder him (specifically with a chemical weapon called Novichok ... which coincidentally has been used on other critics, like former spy Sergei Skripal).  I appreciate how it tries to be a little bit skeptical - even Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev of fact-checking group Bellingcat wondered if Navalny wasn't some double agent - because you never know these days what's real and what isn't (trust, but verify) ... and its subject is clearly a curious case of being either crazy or brave or (probably) a combination of both: the flight at the conclusion back to the Motherland (and his prompt arrest at Sheremetyevo International Airport) is more tense than many Hollywood action movies.  The scene where Navalny - like a modern day Rasputin (only good) - calls up his poisoners and one of them actually tells him how the execution plot went down is not only hard to fathom but surreal as well.  Is it all propaganda?  Yes, but it's not like the Soviets weren't above using it.