**SPOILERS** When three faceless bodies are found buried in the snow in Moscow's Gorky Park the city's police militia chief inspector Ankavy Renko, William Hurt, and his assistance Pasha, Michael Elphick, are immediately called on the scene. Things like this just don't happen in Moscow and the head of the city's police, Alexanderr Knox, wan't the killer or killers found before a panic breaks out among the population.
Right away Renko realized that there was a lot more to this triple murder then what at first meets the eye. Why did the killer slice off his victims faces with surgical precision and even more surprising why did the dreaded KGB in the person of Maj. Pribluda, Rikki Fulton, take over the murder case which didn't seem to involve national security? Or did it! Renko gets his first break on this puzzling case when it's reported that one of the victims-a woman-ice skates was reported to have been stolen from Russian actress Irina Asanova, Joanna Pacula, about a week before she was found murdered and mutilated in Gorky Park! That person is later identified as being Valerya Davidova, Marjaha Nissinen, who just happened to have attended the same collage with Irina as well as being her best friend! It also comes out that the other two bodies found at the murder site were that of Kostia Borodin, Heikki Leppanen, and American tourist James Kirwill, Jukka Hirvikangas, who were unloved in smuggling desperate Russian citizens out of the Soviet Union. It's James' brother a detective in the NYPD William Kirwill, Brian Dennehy, who's now in Moscow looking to find his murderer and bring him to justice! This in fact complicates things even more then they already are for the Moscow Police with Kirwill not willing to cooperating with them but going on his own in finding his brother's killer. In putting all the pieces together Renko soon finds out that the three murder victims as well as the terrified, in what would happen to her if she talks, Irina are all linked together to one person: American successful businessman and entrepreneur Jack Osborne, Lee Marvin!
Osborne it soon comes out has an inside track with higher ups in both the KGB and Moscow City Government and is in fact untouchable from the law even in the case of a multiple murder that he may very well have committed! As a by now obsessed Renko digs up more evidence on Osborne his life becomes endangered in that he's not just dealing with Osborne but top KGB officials as well as those in his own department, the Moscow Police Milita, who will go as far as murder to keep him from finding out the truth! A truth so shockingly mind boggling that if Osborne succeeds with what he's, and his renegade KGB and Moscow Police accomplices, attempting to do it can lead to the collapse of a major part of the Soviet economy that the Soviet Union totally monopolizes!
Unusual movie about Soviet Police procedure that doesn't have people being tortured and beating into giving written confessions to crimes that they didn't commit. In fact the way that Moscow Police Milita Chief Investigator Renko goes about his business in uncovering a baffling mass murder is so professional and calculating that even many US & Western Europe police department can learn from it.
***SPOILERS*** The movie ends in a OK Corral style shoot-out in the frozen woods outside Stockholm Sweden-not Moscow-where Osborne planned to not only make his escape but knock off everyone, including his accomplices in crime, who could connect him not only to the Gorky Park murders but to what his real motives were really all about: Destroying a major part of the Russian economy by making himself filthy rich off it.
Both William Hurt and newcomer Joanna Pacula as Ankady Renko & Irina Asanova give the film, that in many cases is hard to follow, the zip and tension that it needs to keep its audiences full attention even during the scenes when it gets overly boring. As for Lee Marvin as the mysterious Jack Osborne his weather beaten and wrinkled face, especially in his close-up scenes, looked like a road-map to a graveyard which his hard living and drinking lifestyles lead him into some four years later.
Right away Renko realized that there was a lot more to this triple murder then what at first meets the eye. Why did the killer slice off his victims faces with surgical precision and even more surprising why did the dreaded KGB in the person of Maj. Pribluda, Rikki Fulton, take over the murder case which didn't seem to involve national security? Or did it! Renko gets his first break on this puzzling case when it's reported that one of the victims-a woman-ice skates was reported to have been stolen from Russian actress Irina Asanova, Joanna Pacula, about a week before she was found murdered and mutilated in Gorky Park! That person is later identified as being Valerya Davidova, Marjaha Nissinen, who just happened to have attended the same collage with Irina as well as being her best friend! It also comes out that the other two bodies found at the murder site were that of Kostia Borodin, Heikki Leppanen, and American tourist James Kirwill, Jukka Hirvikangas, who were unloved in smuggling desperate Russian citizens out of the Soviet Union. It's James' brother a detective in the NYPD William Kirwill, Brian Dennehy, who's now in Moscow looking to find his murderer and bring him to justice! This in fact complicates things even more then they already are for the Moscow Police with Kirwill not willing to cooperating with them but going on his own in finding his brother's killer. In putting all the pieces together Renko soon finds out that the three murder victims as well as the terrified, in what would happen to her if she talks, Irina are all linked together to one person: American successful businessman and entrepreneur Jack Osborne, Lee Marvin!
Osborne it soon comes out has an inside track with higher ups in both the KGB and Moscow City Government and is in fact untouchable from the law even in the case of a multiple murder that he may very well have committed! As a by now obsessed Renko digs up more evidence on Osborne his life becomes endangered in that he's not just dealing with Osborne but top KGB officials as well as those in his own department, the Moscow Police Milita, who will go as far as murder to keep him from finding out the truth! A truth so shockingly mind boggling that if Osborne succeeds with what he's, and his renegade KGB and Moscow Police accomplices, attempting to do it can lead to the collapse of a major part of the Soviet economy that the Soviet Union totally monopolizes!
Unusual movie about Soviet Police procedure that doesn't have people being tortured and beating into giving written confessions to crimes that they didn't commit. In fact the way that Moscow Police Milita Chief Investigator Renko goes about his business in uncovering a baffling mass murder is so professional and calculating that even many US & Western Europe police department can learn from it.
***SPOILERS*** The movie ends in a OK Corral style shoot-out in the frozen woods outside Stockholm Sweden-not Moscow-where Osborne planned to not only make his escape but knock off everyone, including his accomplices in crime, who could connect him not only to the Gorky Park murders but to what his real motives were really all about: Destroying a major part of the Russian economy by making himself filthy rich off it.
Both William Hurt and newcomer Joanna Pacula as Ankady Renko & Irina Asanova give the film, that in many cases is hard to follow, the zip and tension that it needs to keep its audiences full attention even during the scenes when it gets overly boring. As for Lee Marvin as the mysterious Jack Osborne his weather beaten and wrinkled face, especially in his close-up scenes, looked like a road-map to a graveyard which his hard living and drinking lifestyles lead him into some four years later.