FAQ

When three mutilated bodies, their faces and fingertips cut off to make identification difficult, are found in Moscow's Gorky Park, Soviet militsiya investigator Arkady Renko (William Hurt) attempts to solve the case. Everywhere he turns, however, he finds resistance, dead ends, red herrings, and more dead bodies, and he begins to suspect that the KGB is involved.

The movie is based on the 1981 crime novel Gorky Park by American novelist Martin Cruz Smith. The novel was adapted for the movie by English screenwriter Dennis Potter.

No particular date is given during the movie, but the story is set in Soviet Russia, which existed between 1922 and 1991. Since the novel was published in 1981, a good guess is that the events are supposedly taking place in the late 1970s.

They were two young Soviets-Kostia Borodin (Heikki Leppänen) and Valerya Davidova (Marjatta Nissinen), friends of Irina Asanova (Joanna Pacula)-plus James Kirwill (Jukka Hirvikangas), brother of American detective William Kirwill (Brian Dennehy). They were executed by rich American sable buyer Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin), because they helped Osborne smuggle live sable out of the Soviet Union, and Osborne now considered them loose ends.

The sable (Martes zibellina) is a species of marten in the weasel family (Mustelidae) along with ferrets, mink, otters, badgers, and wolverines. Their silky fur is highly valued, wild Russian sable being among the most valued in the world.

Yes, Gorky Park is an amusement park along the Moskva River in Moscow. The "Gorky Park" scenes in the movie, however, were actually shot in Helsinki, Finland.

Renko and three KGB agents confront Osborne at his farm in Sweden. Osborne tosses to them the pelts from his six sables, but Renko finds that he has more live sables in his shed. Osborne kills the KGB agents then turns his gun on Irina, forcing Renko to come out from cover. When Osborne turns his gun on Renko, Irina shoots Osborne. "Now we can be free," Irina says to Renko, but he explains that the price for her freedom was the promise that he would kill Osborne, retrieve the six pelts, and return to Moscow. He promises her his love and says that they will meet again one day. In the final scene, Renko sets free the remaining sables, and they dash off into the Swedish woods.