Patriots (5*)

What Peter Morgan did for the British Royals in The Crown he now does for Russian oligarchs in Patriots, a tragedy that thrills, chills and surprisingly moves. Sure, I knew the knew the names Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich from the news, but I dismissed them as greedy lackeys of an exhibitionistic autocrat whose behavior had no more bearing on my life than the oh-so-boring House of Windsor.

While employed at the NYC Health Department, I'd even been assigned to do a deep dive on radiation poisoning after Putin had dispatched Alexander Litvinenko, perhaps the earliest of his regime's extrajudicial killings and visited his grave in London's Highgate cemetery.  But Morgan connects all the dots among these men in an electrifying, often funny drama that depicts how the political miscalculation of the smartest man in the room--a brilliant mathematician who seized the moment to ruthlessly capitalize his beloved homeland--produced one of the world's shortest monsters and inched the West as close to nuclear confrontation as it has been since Khruschev (whose daughter consulted on this production) installed missiles in Cuba.  

Patriots also manages to whip up what may be some misplaced sympathy for "the Jew behind the czar" who, in Morgan's telling, eventually comes to appreciate the merits of the path not chosen thanks to the example of his academic mentor, a stand-in for the long-suffering Russian soul, whose belief in the neutrality of numbers remains steadfast.  Superb performances all around, brisk, cinematic direction by Rupert Goold that moves the nearly three-hour production along as breathlessly as a Fox News segment and a set that emphasizes alcohol's indispensability to Russian culture make this highly theatrical history lesson not to be missed.  Even if it's not accurate, it's probably true.

But if I were Morgan, I would be afraid, very afraid.  Radiation poisoning is no way to die.