My childhood library had a copy of this movie, and at the time, probably only had 50 videotapes in total, so I’ve seen the cover of this film hundreds of times. Every single time I laughed at the title. I still do. This is also not to be confused with The Russia House, with Sean Connery on the cover.
This is a mystery set in Soviet Russia in the late 1970s, and like other good mystery novels, mostly tries to stay away from diving too much into the politics of Soviet Russia, except as a vehicle for the plot, especially the limitations of the investigative apparatus. So there’s moments where Arkady Renko, the detective, is hamstrung by party politics or state limitations etc, and this is usually a good thing. There’s also a few moments where the American author or American characters can’t help but bloviate a little, and this is generally not a good thing. It avoids the worst offenses of say a Tom Clancy book, but also avoids the subtlety and consideration of an actually Russian writer. Writers like Masha Gessen or Keith Gessen effectively straddle this line.
The mystery involves three dead bodies found frozen solid in Gorky Park over night. They appear to be shot to death, but the state of the bodies delays the ability to identify and classify their deaths. And in contemporary Russian novel style, their faces have been removed, which also delays identification, to say the least.
The mystery for the detective, a relatively lowly police inspector, is to identify them, be confounded by the unnecessary complication of some Americans, and a LOT of discussion of the sable fur trade.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762806.Gorky_Park?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=ZHfgz0dhyg&rank=1)