Mr. Jones (2019) on Netflix
NR20191h 59mDramaHistoryThriller
Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist, travels to the Soviet Union in 1933 to seek an interview with Stalin. Doubting Soviet claims about Ukraine's harvests, he secures permission to travel south.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.9/1018,800 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist who has already interviewed Adolf Hitler, works as a political adviser to the former British prime minister David Lloyd George. Convinced that Stalin's spending does not match Soviet claims, and let go when the office cuts costs, he uses his contacts to obtain a Russian visa and hopes for an interview with Stalin. In Moscow he meets the journalist Eugene Lyons and a party of British engineers, who hint that the Ukrainian harvests may not be as generous as advertised, and he learns that reporters are forbidden to travel beyond the city. From the fellow journalist Ada Brooks he hears that his Moscow contact was killed while looking into the supposed Ukrainian agricultural revolution. Jones alters his papers to appear still employed by Lloyd George and secures an invitation to Ukraine.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mr. Jones (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jones's great-nephew and literary executor Philip Colley criticized the film for omitting that Jones maintained contacts with German officials, including high-ranking Nazis, dined with Joseph Goebbels, and traveled to Ukraine at the invitation of the German Vice Consul in Kharkiv.
- Colley said Jones never witnessed dead bodies or cannibalism, and criticized the film's invented scenes of Jones meeting George Orwell, seeking an interview with Joseph Stalin, and having a love interest he never had.
- Jones's great-nephew and literary executor Philip Colley said the film makes viewers believe only Ukraine was affected, while Jones reported millions dying across the Soviet Union, from every part of Russia, the Volga, Siberia, the North Caucasus and Central Asia.
