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I was expecting little of this film, but was so pleasantly surprised after I had finished watching it. In fact the last time I was so pleasantly surprised was in 1994 after seeing the Shawshank Redemption for the first time in its last week playing in the theatres.

I feel this movie should at least have been nominated for best foreign picture.

This movie is an accurate historical depiction of the final year and a half of life of the Russian royal family prior to their tragic execution in 1918 by Bolsheviks. A film about execution and tragedy often falls flat on its face because the viewer walks away feeling empty, sad, and depressed, but here is an entirely different situation.

The director paints a true picture of the love all family members had for one another, and at the same time shows the type of callous and cynical people were in power after the revolution.

Finally we are showed footage of the canonization of the family as martyrs for the manner in which they accepted their death, without any prejudice to their evil executioners.

It is a heavy film, but one that does inspire. This film is incredible, if at least for its accurate historical re-enactment.

A slightly pro-monarchic version of the story, but very honest nonetheless. As historians say Nicky was more incompetent than anything, he was not ready for the throne, he was not ready for war or politics (the infamous tennis-interrupting telegram incident) but he was not evil, bloodthirsty or "bloody" as his nickname was at the time.

This film presents him as a family man, which is not a lie, since most of the film shows the family under captivity.

The film is, however, sanitized. They did not show the mistreatment of the family while they were under house-arrest.

The acting is amazing, however. From the soldier refusing his superior's orders, to the person responsible for moving the family (against his will? ambivalence) to the Tsarevich's friend, sad to see the family "go."

The children behaved like real children, the mixed feelings everyone had about everything... it's quite deep, even if the story is very straightforward.

The moment the monarch is dethroned it becomes apparent that there was no escape for the family. Dissolving the monarchy did not satisfy the Bolsheviks, so the writing was on the wall.

All in all, it's a great, light-hearted film even if it's very sad at the end. Even knowing the ending couldn't prevent the heartbreaking ending from getting to me.

A very impressive piece of film work - great setting, great actors - and of course an inevitable tragic story.

But - alas, there is an alas. The real story of the captivity of the czar family has been - based on numerable historical accounts - much more gruesome and humiliating than showed in this picture.

And finally. I would have surely preferred if the final sequence with the bombastic funeral and canonizing service held by the leading figures of the Russian Orthodox church under their chief, former KGB agent "Drozdov" aka Patriarch Alexij and his equals was spared...

But I suppose that was the price that was to be paid for the support of the "Russian government" and the "Government of Moscow" as stated in the credits.