From Russia with Lev (2024)

Documentary

92 min    -    Rating: 8.4

Tony Andre, Hunter Biden, Joseph Bondy…

Lev Parnas' story is told specifically as it relates to his 2021 conviction for his role in illegal donations to the 2020 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and by association his work on behalf of Trump and Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on Trump's political opponent, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, most specifically with regard to the latter's position on the Board of a Ukrainian energy company, whether that dirt existed or not. Much of the story is told directly from Lev's own mouth and that of his voice of reason, his wife Svetlana Parnas. The early part of the story focuses on Lev's activities as a hustler straddling the law, more often than not falling on the criminal side, and how he, a non-political person, came into Trump's orbit and ultimately inner circle. The latter part of the story focuses on that work for Trump and Giuliani, Svetlana's warnings to him that Lev was solely being used as a pawn, and being sucked into what he now understands is the cult of Trump. The epilogue to the story focuses on Lev's feelings of his role in the downfall of the younger Biden, in large part collateral damage in Trump's real target of the elder Biden.