Review | Words of War — A compelling personal story that misses an opportunity to say more

★★★★☆

Words of War is carried by a strong leading performance from Maxine Peake, who does credit to Anna Politkovskaya’s fearlessness as a reporter.

This character study about the late Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) — best known for her fearless coverage of the Kremlin’s brutal tactics in the Second Chechen War and her subsequent assassination — is  a good film.

As a biopic, especially for someone familiar with Politkovskaya’s story, it works — but as a film that covers what happened in Chechnya, or how it set Vladimir Putin on a path that culminated in Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it falls short.

Peake does a fine job capturing Politkovskaya’s professional journey from the beginning of her Chechen coverage to her assassination in 2006.

Fresh off a starring role in the superb miniseries Say Nothing about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Peake physically embodies Politkovskaya and creates a fully rounded character who is sharp, witty, and, most importantly, uncompromising in her search for the truth.

The film deftly shows the complexities of the work-life balance (if one can use such a banal phrase to describe the life of a reporter murdered for doing her job), and the toll that Politkovskaya’s work took on her family life, particularly her husband, played by an always excellent Jason Isaacs. It also highlighted the conflict in the newsroom, as Politkovskaya butted heads with her editor, portrayed by a reliable Ciaran Hinds, as her coverage of Chechnya consumes all her other work, and threatens to take over the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, as a whole.

For a film based on a true story, it is faithful, as far as I could tell, to what really happened. Key historical events that happen in the film, such as the Russian security apparatus’s disturbing cynicism and callous disdain for human life in the deadly Moscow theatre crisis, the uncovering of mass graves in Chechnya, and Politkovskaya’s eventual murder in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building, are portrayed faithfully to the historical record.

Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that Politkovskaya’s family said in 2023 they were ‘very concerned’ about a preliminary version of the script (with the rather unfortunate tentative title of ‘Mother Russia’), which they said was ‘grossly inaccurate’.

Politkovskaya’s bravery and commitment to her work in the face of ever increasing threats are an inspiring message, especially considering she paid the ultimate price.

For all of these reasons, the film, as a biopic, works, and I would recommend it to people who are interested in Politkovskaya’s story or journalism in Russia (at least what it was like in the 2000s), or really anyone who wants to see a powerful message of bravery and perseverance.

The problem is, however, that the film could have been so much more.

In many ways, the brutal wars in Chechnya were Russia’s original sin in its post-independence period. From the beginning of the conflict in 1994 to the final tapering off of ‘anti-terrorist operations’ in 2009, some 100,000 civilians were killed, as well as thousands of Chechen fighters and as many as 30,000 Russian soldiers.

Russian soldiers engaged in horrific human rights abuses against the population of Chechnya — not just indiscriminate shelling that resulted in collateral damage, but deliberate, systematic torture, rape, so-called ‘filtration’ prison camps executions, and the punitive torching of entire villages, as well as the virtual destruction of the entire Chechen capital of Grozny.

These events are depicted in the film — there are summary executions, grim prison camps, and scenes of urban destruction — but they are given little context. Often, these scenes only come across on screen as a backdrop, a set piece of sorts in which we can trace Politkovskaya’s character development. Without prior knowledge of the Chechen wars, a casual viewer would likely be rather lost, and more importantly, unaware of the true scale of death.

There are some Chechen characters, notably Politkovskaya’s local fixer Anzor and his family, as well as a memorable montage of Chechen civilians recounting the brutality of the Russian army, but the main focus is Politkovskaya, her family, and her editor.

While watching, it reminded me a bit of an unfortunate Hollywood trope in which stories about far-off conflicts are told from the perspective of a (typically) white hero or heroine.

The film did address this, particularly in one scene that juxtaposed Politkovskaya receiving an award at fancy ceremony in London with a Chechen being tortured at crumbling prison camp, but it wasn’t enough to fully shake the feeling that a story ostensibly about the conflict in Chechnya didn’t have many Chechens in it.

Towards the end of the film, Politkovskaya says in a voiceover while writing, ‘the journalist should never be the centre of the story’. The comment seemed almost a bit too on the nose because, in fact, she was the centre of the story.

The Chechen wars as a whole are a subject that have barely been plumbed by Hollywood, and they deserve more attention — which is not to say that Politkovskaya’s story doesn’t also deserve its own focus.

But my real issue with the film is not about what it did, but rather what it didn’t do. While the focus on Politkovskaya is understandable from a narrative standpoint, it was also a huge missed opportunity to talk about Russia, and to address the elephant in the room, the glaringly obvious parallel that somehow is never even hinted at— that what Russia did in Chechnya is what it is now doing to Ukraine.

Scenes in Words of War that showed the charred, smoking ruins of grey Soviet-era buildings, mass graves, torture camps, and lines of civilian refugees could have been lifted from today, as Russia inflicts the same terror on Ukraine.

Russia was left unpunished for not just Politkovskaya’s murder (her ‘killers’ were sentenced to prison, but those who ordered the hit were never identified), but let off the hook almost entirely for what it did to Chechnya.

It’s not difficult to see that the failure of the West to respond to the events depicted in Words of War can be traced to the genocidal war it is carrying out now.

The cruelty, the callous disregard for human life, the characterisation of Vladimir Putin as a power-hungry thug — they are all in the movie, but there is a huge missed opportunity to show that we all knew those things 20 years ago, but instead opted to go for business as usual.

The movie ends with a montage of journalists murdered around the world, hammering home the point that the film is about Politkovskaya and journalism — not Russia, and not Chechnya.

A film that was able to not just tell Politkovskaya’s story, but also make it clear that the brutal, imperialist state that murdered her and hundreds of thousands of Chechens is the same state we see murdering hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians today would be a much stronger film.

Film details: Words of War, directed by Sean Penn, 2025.  It premiered in US theatres on 2 May.

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