Caught in the middle is Tolstoy’s new secretary, Valentin (James McAvoy, from Atonement and The Last King of Scotland), a dedicated follower of Tolstoy’s doctrine who falls from grace in the arms of a beautiful servant (Kerry Condon), who initiates him in the pleasures of sex, to the thrill of Countess Sofya.  Helen Mirren is a lusty, roaring wonder playing, of all things, the long-suffering wife of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer in peak form). The Last Station 
 
 Running time 112 minutes 
 
 Written and directed by Michael Hoffman 
 
 Starring James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, Helen Mirren 
 
 Let the drums roll. (Mr. Giamatti is awfully good, though he might have flattened a bit of his archness and dispensed with a few twirls of Chertkov's waxed mustache.) Tolstoy (Mr. Plummer), who heads a pacifist movement that preaches passive resistance, truth, freedom and sexual abstinence, and eschews Russian royalty, free thinking, organized religion, the accumulation of wealth, the owning of private property and eating anything but vegetables, is caught in a tug of war between a scheming disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a rabid Trotskyite who persuades him to leave all of his royalties to the Russian people, and his wife of nearly 50 years, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), a jealous, overripe and hysterical drama queen who demands that he will his estate to his family for posterity.
– Critics are hopping aboard at The Last Station, a lively drama about Leo Tolstoy's final days starring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. Here’s what they’re saying: “The arrival of a movie with as much intelligence and artistry as The Last Station should also be accompanied by the sound of trumpets,” writes an ebullient Rex Reed for The New York Observer. “ This movie is passionate, profound and unforgettable.” Nearly every critic raves about Mirren, who “is a lusty roaring wonder” playing Tolstoy’s long-suffering wife, writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “To watch her threaten, cajole, and seduce her husband is a treat Oscar voters cannot ignore.” Plummer’s Tolstoy is great, too—he’s “warmly and disarmingly life-sized,” writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. He calls the movie “a lovely quicksilver version of literary history.” But AO Scott of the New York Times is less impressed. “You will certainly see better acting” in other movies, he writes, “but it is unlikely you will see more. To say the actors overdo it would be an understatement.”