May 7, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by James Strong
Some language in Russian and Chechen with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Russia, from 1999 to 2006, the dramatic film “Words of War” (based on true events) features a predominantly white group of people (with some Middle Eastern people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya becomes an outspoken critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Chechnya before, during and after she spends time in war zones and in hostage situations.
Culture Audience: “Words of War” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and biopics about journalists who have criticisms of their own governments.
Clunky but intriguing, “Words of War” is mostly watchable because of the cast members’ performances. This often-trite drama (about slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Valdimir Putin) should’ve had better editing and sharper dialogue. It’s not a horrible movie, but there’s nothing outstanding about it either.
Directed by James Strong and written by Eric Poppen, “Words of War” (formerly titled “Mother Russia”) takes place in Russia from 1999 to 2006. It’s a biopic that was not approved by Politkovskaya’s family. However, “Words of War” plays it so safe and has such a fawning portrayal of Politkovskaya as a fearless hero (with no realistic personality flaws), the movie comes across as an officially sanctioned biopic.
Even when she’s shown near death in a hospital after being poisoned, her recovery is quickly skipped over, and she’s back on the job as a reporter again as if this poisoning never really happened. There’s no mention of realistic and lingering health issues she would’ve gotten as a result of this severe poisoning. For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie by their first names.
At age 48, Politkovskaya was murdered by a gunman in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, which was the 54th birthday of Russian president Putin. Even if people see “Words of War” before knowing that Politkovskaya was murdered, the movie keeps foreshadowing that things will not end well for her because of her scathing criticisms of Putin in her work. Because of the abrupt and sometime off-putting way that “Words of War” is edited, the movie comes across as a “check list” of certain events in her life before quickly moving on to the next event.
“Words of War” begins in 2004, with a scene of Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) in a hospital for what is later revealed to be poisoning from drinking tea that a flight attendant served her on an airplane. Anna is a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper. She had been on the plane to report on the September 2004 hostage crisis at a school in Beslan. Instead of being able to complete the trip, she ended up unconscious in the intensive-care unit (ICU) of this hospital.
Anna’s two adult children—son Ilya (played by Harry Lawtey) and daughter Vera (played by Naomi Battrick)—are by her side at the hospital. Anna is also being attended to by a nurse named Mila (played by Elee Nova), when Anna’s boss Dmitry Muratov (played by Ciarán Hinds), the founder/editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, arrives at the hospital. Dmitry tells the unnamed ICU nurse receptionist (played by Jana Herbsta) that he’s there to visit Anna.
Dmitry is told that only family members are allowed to visit patients. And by the way, she mentions, there’s no record of someone with Anna’s name being admitted to the hospital. Dmitry immediately knows what that means: Anna is being targeted to get “disappeared” by the Russian government.
And so what does he do? He’s able to immediately find the room where Anna is and tells Ilya, Vera and Mila that they all have to smuggle Anna out of the hospital immediately. They wheel an unconscious Anna, who’s using an IV drip, out on a gurney and onto a waiting private plane, with no security guards in sight to stop them. How convenient.
For someone who’s supposedly being surveilled by a government and was poisoned under suspicious circumstances, Anna sure can be smuggled easily out of this hospital. It’s a very “only in a movie” moment that doesn’t ring true. A better movie would have made this hospital escape have more realistic obstacles.
People who saw the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary “Navalny” (about Russian writer/activist/politician Alexei Navalny, another outspoken critic of Putin) will remember that after Navalny was poisoned and in a hospital in 2020, his hospital room was guarded like a fortress by Russian soldiers. His wife Yulia Navalnaya had to fight to get through the human barricade to see him. In 2024, Navalny died of a fall in prison in under mysterious circumstances.
After Anna is successfully smuggled out of the hospital, “Words of War” abruptly jumps back in time to 1999, the year that Putin became prime minister of Russia. Anna is appalled by the Russian government’s invasion of Chechnya. And she isn’t afraid write about it and to go in the war zone to do to on-the-scene reporting.
Anna’s husband Alexander “Sasha” Politkovsky (played by Jason Isaacs), who is a broadcast journalist and TV talk show host, doesn’t want her to go this war zone. But nothing can stop Anna once she has her mind made up. Sasha makes Anna promise to always notify her family about her locations when she’s in Chechnya. Ilya is more upset than Vera about Anna going to Chechnya.
While in Chechnya, Anna meets a local journalist named Anzor (played by Fady Elsayed), who gives reality checks to wide-eyed Anna about how dangerous things can be. He somewhat reluctantly agrees to her request to let her tag along with him. Anzor also acts as an language interpreter when Anna as to interview some local people, including a woman named Fatima (played by Lujza Richter), who says she doesn’t trust Russian journalists, but Anna quickly gains Fatima’s trust anyway.
Yes, some explosions go off near Anna, but the movie doesn’t get too graphic or terrifying in showing her war zone experiences. Most people watching this movie will know or probably guess that if Anna is going to die, it’s not going to be in a combat zone. Her time in this war zone comes and goes quickly (less than 20 minutes) before she’s back in Moscow in another abrupt scene transition where’s back to a domestic life with Sasha, who’s feeling restless because he’s now unemployed and a little bored.
“Words of War” could have used title cards to show when a scene takes place in a different year because the timeline will be confusing to some viewers. Anna’s time in the war zone is supposed to be haunting her, but it’s treated in a somewhat superficial manner. In 2001, she attends a prestigious media awards ceremony with Sasha, who is supportive and enthusiastic when Anna gets a global award for human rights journalism. But the award feels like an empty accomplishment to Anna, who would rather be reporting from the war zone in Chechnya instead of reporting from an office desk in Moscow.
Anna’s confrontations with the story’s villains have good acting, but the dialogue is at times cringeworthy. There’s a scene in Chechnya where Anna is alone in a dilapidated room with a Russian combat leader named Major Lapin (played Steffan Rhodri), where she has been attempting to interview him. Major Lapin is hostile to her and doesn’t want to be interviewed.
Anna ends up scolding Major Lapin for all the death and destruction that the Russians are causing in Chechnya. As Anna gets up to leave the room, Major Lapin’s responds by coldly snarling at her, “I can slit your throat and let you bleed out like a pig.” This is the type of corny dialogue that lowers the quality of the movie.
A character that was fabricated for the movie is a shady government agent named Egorov (played by Ian Hart), who approaches Anna at a cafe when she’s back in Moscow. He starts off with a friendly conversation that turns into a lecture/warning that her life is in danger if she continues to insult the Russian government, namely Putin. Egorov pops up again from time to time to let Anna know that she is under surveillance.
The most suspenseful part of “War of Words” is when about 170 hostages are taken during a peformance at Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater in 2002. The hostage takers are Chechen fighters who are demanding Chechnya’s freedom from Russia. Because of her recent reporting from Chechnya, Anna is enlisted to be a hostage negotiator.
The movie has some subplots that kind of fizzle out, such as Anzor being captured in Chechnya and Anna feeling guilty about it. Another subplot shows Anna being stalked by a young man named Ivan (played by Billy Hinchcliff), who isn’t the type of person most viewers might think he is. These subplots are thrown into the story, like extraneous ingredients in a stew.
Peake depicts Anna with a steely confidence and somewhat of a messianic complex because Anna thinks it would be noble to die for a journalistic cause, even if her death would bring immeasurable pain to her family and other loved ones. Isaacs is perfectly fine as conflicted Sasha, who is torn between being supportive of his wife’s career and expressing his misgivings about her occupational hazards. The scenes of Peake and Isaacs together as Anna and Sasha are believable in their portrayals of this longtime married couple.
Hinds has a standout scene where Dmitry essentially shouts at Anna for acting as if she owns the newspaper. It’s a battle of egos where Anna wants to assert her independence but Dmitry has to remind her who’s the boss at this job. It’s one of the more realistic scenes in the movie because it’s one of the few times where Anna’s judgment is questioned by someone who shares her political beliefs.
“Words of War” is certainly a well-intentioned movie about a Russian journalist who could be seen as a martyr by many people. But it’s a little disconcerting that this movie, which has a cast of mostly Western Europeans, didn’t bother to have Russian accents for the Russian characters. Every character who’s Russian in the movie sounds British. If you can get past the incorrect accents and the sometimes sluggish pacing of “Words of War,” the movie is worth watching for a fascinating story about a journalist who lived on the edges of of risk-taking reporting—even if those edges look a little too smoothed-over for this movie.
Rolling Pictures released “Words of War” in select U.S. cinemas on May 2, 2025.
