‘Stalin’

You instantly feel that the epic 20th-Century despot so ably depicted by Robert Duvall in HBO’s 1992 “Stalin� is someone to fear deeply. The feeling lasts from the moment you meet him being rejected for World War I service in the czar’s crumbling army until his death in 1953, surrounded by toadies at his dacha in Kuntsevo. The Soviet Union and its history, however, overmatch a small-screen movie of a little less than three hours. Yet because there’s something disturbingly charismatic about evil, this is a fascinating character study even in outline form (HBO Monday at 4 p.m.).