The Red Lotus

A made for TV drama. Two railway workers find the dead body of a prominent citizen in his car by the tracks. The local police officer is called I to investigate. Riding along with him is his friend, a star police investigator from Moscow, who coincidentily was invited to visit the family for the weekend. The search for the killer shifts into gear, as the identity is made known, a disturbed young woman, who had recently broken out of a mental institute, where she had been housed for three years.

A high degree of inevitability about the plot, sprinkled with a few too many coincidences and a couple of glaring plot holes spoil what might have been a better than average story. This is a pity as the as the basic concept is intriguing and the killer is the most interesting character in the film. The star investigator takes over more and more even though it is not his case and he appears to be three steps ahead of everyone else in solving the crime. The signposts are a little too obvious, and of course there is a degree of corruption and coercion involved, all too common in contemporary Russian films. The film would have benefited greatly from more development of the script, and it needed to be at least ten minutes longer as the ending is compacted and all too contrived.