EVILENKO A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2005 David N. Butterworth
no stars (out of ****)
A. R. Evilenko was a devout, card-carrying Communist Party member who killed--and ate--some 55 children and young women over a ten-year period. Evilenko wasn't his real name; that's just one of several admitted fabrications by Italian journalist David Grieco, the director of "Evilenko" and the author of the book "The Communist Who Ate Children" on which the film is based. The serial killer's real name was Andrej Romanovic Cikatilo, a high school teacher from Kiev, c. 1982.
Grieco's script cites 'Evilenko' because it "sounded good. Evil and - enko, y'know?"
The writer/director also confesses that, while his book and subsequent film are based on a real person and real events, he made some of the stuff up. But this isn't some cheesy Eastern Bloc slasher pic (supposedly). "There are a lot of subjects in the film," Grieco adds, mentioning that the more he got into researching "the monster of Rostov" the more he saw this tale of a cold blooded cannibal paralleling the Soviet Union's political climate at the time
So much for the setup. If only the film were as earnest, as well meaning, as politically astute as its director intended. Instead, "Evilenko" is a bloody, awful mess.
Discredit must go to Grieco, of course, who offers up a bland and often times embarrassing script that's laughable one minute, nonsensical the next. He has selected Malcolm McDowell to portray his central protagonist and while that might seem like an expert signing on paper he plops McDowell down into a second-rate production and expects him to give a first-rate performance without any of the necessary supports. That, and he saddles McDowell with an Elton John shag, huge--and dweeby- -tortoiseshell frames, and asks him to deliver lines that sound like dialogue exorcised from an amateur dramatics production of "Sweeney Todd."
To make matters worse, with very few exceptions all of the supporting characters--victims, wives, policemen--sound as though their voices were dubbed. Turns out they were! Not from the Russian, so the lip- synching is off, like in an old Cantonese action flick starring Jackie Chan (which might have made the film more amusing at least). But from poorly-accented English, apparently.
"Evilenko" is totally devoid of background, insight, and motivation. Is Cikatilo a tortured soul, a painfully troubled individual as a result of a lonely, depressed adolescence at the hands of abusive parents (which is typically the case)? We don't know. Are his psychotic frustrations and sociopathic tendencies purely a reflection of his country's political turmoil? It's not clear. Grieco hints at something deeper, then dilutes his narrative with dirty-old-man-on-a- park-bench scenarios, snatches of skin and gore, and a "bares all" showdown between killer and cop that's as ridiculous as it is pitiful.
We will never truly know the inner workings of a sick and depraved criminal mind but "Evilenko" doesn't even try!
Serial killer movies are a dime a dozen and you'd be hard pressed to find one as inane as this. Try "The Silence of the Lambs," for starters, or "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," even the overrated "Monster" instead. Better yet check out the 1995 TV movie "Citizen X," which documents the Cikatilo murders from the vantage point of the Russian forensic pathologist assigned to the case-- it's available on DVD.
Too bad "Evilenko" is available, period.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
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