The Trotsky

Jacob Tierney’s The Trotsky is a teen comedy with a difference. Jay Baruchel, playing a character named Leon Bronstein (which is the real name of communist Godfather, Leon Trotsky), is a youngster who delves into leftist history and decides that he is the reincarnation of the mythic Russian revolutionary. He angers his father by convincing the wealthy businessman’s workers to go on strike. His dad retaliates by banishing Leon to a public school, where the burgeoning radical resolves to transform the student union into a real union. While the student group organizes dances, he wants to organize rights. Leon turns away from the values of his prosperous family, hooks up with Comrade Lenin (Jacob Tierney), falls for an older woman called Alexandra, and so on. Sounds like serious stuff, but Tierney has managed to find the humour, and lots of it, in the concept of a modern day “student radical.”