Gulag

A film thoroughly mediocre in every aspect - acting, writing, the very idea. An American journalist (Keith), victim of a KGB plot, is arrested while covering a sports tournament in Moscow. This honest and innocent hero is beaten and humiliated by various black-hearted flunkies of the Russian legal system before being carted off to a Siberian prison camp for ten years. There he eventually persuades a stiff-lipped Englishman (McDowell) - very democratic, this film, when it comes to handing out national stereotypes - to join him in an outrageous escape attempt across more than 1,000 miles of snowdriven Siberian wastes. At which point one roots for a pack of wolves to come and put an end to everyone's misery. A moving performance from Suchet (as a Jewish academic imprisoned for requesting an exit visa to Israel) simply points up what an insulting load of old cobblers the rest is.