Product Details

• Format: Color, Director's Cut, Full length, Import, Letterboxed, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: French, Russian
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• VHS Release Date: June 15, 1996
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00002NDSX
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,270 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dark russian drama, June 13, 2003

By 

barry edwards (Vancouver,B.C., Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chekist [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Historial accounts of the Russian revolution never dwelled on the common victim quite as much as The Chekist.In so much as to say, the young officer and his men sank to the lowest levels of human morality dealing out the new Order in mass murder while the more visible political front extoned the virtues of the so called collective peoples.Realizing his loss of humanity, the officer took the only route left to him in this new Order only to be swept away within it becoming a victim himself.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Total Eclipse, January 28, 2004

By 

JR Dunn (New Brunswick,, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chekist [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is one of the most disturbing films ever made, and perhaps one of the greatest. It is the only film I have seen that gives an honest and unflinching portrayal of what a totalitarian dictatorship is like from the inside.

The Cheka was the embryonic KGB, organized on Lenin's orders under the command of a renegade Pole, Feliks Dzerzhinski. Its sole duty was to root out and annihilate counter-revolutionary activity by any means necessary. Overkill was not a problem.

"Chekist" illustrates how this was carried out in the simplest manner possible. The result is like a chapter of "Gulag Archipelago" brought to the screen, and is just as difficult to take. I can safely say that nine out of ten viewers will fail to get through the middle section, which consists of mass execution after mass execution to the point of hallucination. But this is the only way the story could have been told.

While a film like "The Chekist" is nearly beyond criticism, there are some flaws--a rather facile "Freudian" explanation for the main character's viciousness (I assume this would have been new to many Russian viewers) and an epilogue mocking the traditional "revolutionary romantic" view of the Cheka which may not be a failing at all.

I can't honestly recommend this picture--most viewers would not be able to endure it. But I will say this: the fact that it's out of circulation is a crime. And if you want to truly understand what the Century of Massacre was about, you need to see this film.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars film shames hollywood, October 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Chekist [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Considering that hollywood's attitude towards genocide is that it is only bad when committed by non-liberals, it is interesting and shameful that the best (0nly?) and most honest film about the communist genocide had to come out of Russia. This is a rough film yet informative. The viewer comes away with an understanding of Communism, the people who espouse it and why the logical result of Communism is genocide. This film is a masterpiece, a slap in the face to American film and a challenge.