Evilenko Movie Review

Why change the name of a real-life bad guy, A. R. Cikatilo, who killed and ate some 50 children in a Cold War-era U.S.S.R.? Why, so you can change it to Evilenko, which still sounds Russian but has the word "evil" in it. As played by Malcolm McDowell, the aging school teacher-cum-murderer is suitably, almost stereotypically, creepy, but the movie he's asked to buttress comes off as cold and irrelevant. The hotshot detective on the case isn't so much an investigator as a sleepwalker. More than anything, his lazy inquisition (and McDowell's banal defense: impotence) reminds us why communism didn't work out for the Russians.