[6][7] The producer Alexander Rodnyansky has said: "It deals with some of the most important social issues of contemporary Russia while never becoming an artist's sermon or a public statement; it is a story of love and tragedy experienced by ordinary people".

In the northern Russian coastal town of Pribrezhny live Nikolay Sergeyev, a hotheaded car mechanic; his second wife, Lilya; and his teenage son, Romka.

The town's corrupt Mayor Vadim Sergeyevich is plotting legal chicanery to expropriate the beautiful seaside land on which Nikolay's house is built.

Nikolay's old friend Dmitry Seleznyov, a sharp and successful lawyer from Moscow, arrives in town to fight the expropriation through the local court system.

After the court rules in favor of the expropriation, Nikolay is arrested at the police station for shouting at the officers, and no one in government will accept Dmitry's new criminal filing against the mayor.

Meanwhile, Mayor Vadim Sergeyevich goes for help to one of his crony bosses, the Russian Orthodox Church bishop, who tells him that all power comes from God and encourages him to stop whining to him and solve his problems forcefully.

While the family is packing to move out, Nikolay forces himself on Lilya, and Romka accidentally glimpses them in intercourse and flees the house, collapsing in tears by a whale skeleton on the shore.

As the mayor and other local leaders exit the church and drive away in their luxury European and Japanese cars, it is revealed to be Nikolay's old property.

When Andrey Zvyagintsev produced a short film in the United States, he was told the story of Marvin Heemeyer.

[16] The screenplay was written by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin and is loosely adapted from the biblical stories of Job from Uz and King Ahab of Samaria and Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Leviathan lives up to its title, offering trenchant, well-crafted social satire on a suitably grand scale.

[21] Peter Bradshaw, writing a full five-star review for The Guardian, gave the film great praise.

[26] Vladimir Medinsky, the then Minister of Culture and a conservative historian, acknowledged that the film showed talented moviemaking but said that he did not like it.

He thought it strange that there is not a single positive character in the movie and implied that the director was not fond of Russians but rather "fame, red carpets and statuettes".

[27] In turn, when appearing on oppositional TV channel Dozhd, director Zvyagintsev was criticised by journalist Ksenia Sobchak for accepting government subsidies.

[citation needed] Vladimir Pozner, a veteran Russian journalist, said: "Anything seen as being critical of Russia in any way is automatically seen as either another Western attempt to denigrate Russia and the Eastern Orthodox Church, or it's the work of some kind of fifth column of Russia-phobes who are paid by the West to do their anti-Russian work or are simply themselves profoundly anti-Russian.