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cmdrdan2001
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Afganskiy izlom (1992)
Very realistic war
American war movie fans might be bored out of their skulls by this movie, but that boredom is born of ignorance. Guerrilla suppression operations are always like that. Sit around and wait, get some hookers, get drunk at the base, wheel and deal with the businessman, kick a prisoner around, cover up the killing of the street merchant by the green private. Then, boom, there goes two fuel trucks, and for 10 minutes a small-arms battle with one high-caliber machine gun. Then wait for brass to plan a way to knock out their stronghold, and then end up killing a few civilians in the process of doing it. If reality doesn't work for Western viewers, there's always Top Gun or Rambo (Top Gun realistic? nope)
The best part of Afganskiy Izlom's realism was the way all the planes dropped flares like confetti. They had to do that because Carter and Reagan gave the Mujahedin so many missiles. Also, the wave of Mi-24's was excellent, a better helo attack even than Apocalypse now. The sight of their missiles dropping and shooting was a scene of impending "death from above" for whoever they were aimed at.
It's funny how the Soviets were able to make an honest Afghanistan movie within a year after their departure, but it took the US six years. Afganskiy Izlom is just as real if you apply it to NATO's occupation too. Someone will always pick up the gun and shoot you cause they care more about the land. It's a movie Westerners should watch. Unfortunately I don't think anyone has ever made English subtitles; I might have to make some.
Odinochnoe plavanie (1986)
It's a Spoof of Rambo not a copy!
I remember all the press calling this the Russian Rambo back in the '80's and now that I've seen it, it's obvious they never saw it. Even if they had spoken a word of Russian, which they probably didn't.
For starters, Solo Voyage doesn't even remotely take itself seriously. It was intentionally "bad" like Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, and it works: it's freaking hilarious. Without a doubt, it's not a copy of American superwarrior movies, its a parody.
The first 10 minutes are so "bad" that, if it were a serious movie, the whole audience would just go home immediately. Every bit of English dialogue is immediately translated by the narrator, and all the dialogue is in English for those first 10 minutes. The CIA agents and their capitalist bosses discuss their evil plan over a game of golf. Major Jack's flashbacks are a short montage of images that are at first violent-looking but at the end are as ordinary as pictures of people eating food. It's always exactly the same flashback too.
The film skillfully adapts American stereotypes to the super-villain role. CIA agents, rich golfers, insane Vietnam vets and... a young couple on a yacht. Not just on a yacht, in fact - they're seeking treasure too, for extra greed. The missile control center on the island base is just plain nuts: a fixed neon picture of the island, and a line of fixed LED lights up to a neon picture of a ship, and a line of off-course lights ending in a ... sailing yacht! It resembles nothing more than a diagram on a Lite-Brite from the '70's. Whoever designed it must have known months in advance that the missile would be fired at a ship and go astray and hit a sailboat.
The American accents being done right is another mockery. But the dialogue was done wrong in other ways as a lampoon. Often the Americans would talk in short bursts of a few words, pausing constantly to let the narrator catch up with them. On occasion they would talk slower than any American has probably ever talked. Check out the missile control officers, for example, when they prepare to launch. When the yachter meets the Russians, he says "yeah, I'm a capitalist." What American ever says that? It's a direct spoof of the Russian always saying "I am Soviet Communist." After the yachter's wife is killed and he finally realizes the Russians didn't do it, he joins up with the Marines with one motive: revenge. He's there in all the fighting, but once it ends, the film forgets all about him.
Enough about the Americans... a superwarrior movie is about the fighting, right? Well the Russians do some fighting all right, every bit of it funny and impossible. When they first land on the island, the Americans surround them and have them dead to rights. Just like Hollywood, they first drop their good weapons (assault rifles) and then suddenly fight their way out of it with knives. When they find their way into the hidden missile base, they run into a prone machine gunner in a hallway. One of the Marines trips the American yachtsman and they fire from a half-prone position, which in reality would be right in the path of the bullets. Tha naval battle involves the fantasy of anti-ballistic missiles actually working reliably.
The main hero is a spoof of Rambo too. He remarks about muzhestvennaya rabota after the battle, but he's no tough guy. He's a skinny 50-year-old with gray hair and he's nice to his men and to the American civilians too. He looks like a guy you'd see managing a small grocery store or owning an antique shop.
The articles I read about Solo Voyage mentioned the hero's death as a sign the Soviets had yet to learn about sequels. The media just didn't get it: a spoof doesn't need a sequel. In fact, killing the hero is just another lampoon of Hollywood's inability to kill the hero. They thought the USSR was copying them when in fact it was mocking them.
È tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un'altra volta! (1971)
Sorry Excuse for a Western
I saw this movie on cable television. It played right after The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Talk about day and then night.
When I saw that it starred Lee Van Cleef, and heard the catchy theme song, I thought, hey, maybe this will be good.
But alas, Lee Van Cleef went from the Bad to the Bad Movie. As far as I am concerned, there are only three Spaghetti Westerns, and Return of Sabata is a perfect example why. These imitations don't measure up.
Van Cleef makes a valiant effort as the cool cat Sabata who always finds a way to win. But as he is not countered by any competent antagonist, his efforts are wasted. The movies' arch-villain McKintock is evil enough, but hapless (why doesn't he just have a bunch of guys with shotguns assassinate Sabata?) and surrounded by clownish lackeys with no sand.
These themes are established early: Sabata always knows what's going on, and Sabata always wins. It seems half the film consists of McKintock's men challenging Sabata to one gambling contest after another, then trying to trick or cheat him, only to find that Sabata cheats better. Many of these scenes end with Sabata pulling a gun at some clever time, including a small-caliber barrel hidden up his sleeve. Somehow no one ever decides to draw before he does, and time and again, a roomful of armed hostiles is mysteriously cowed. Van Cleef wears a Cool Hand Luke air throughout, but the effect is to turn him into a kind of god-figure. He can get the drop on dozens of men at once? Who can challenge him, then, in this town full of cowards? Yawn.
The non-gambling parts of this film seem to be inspired by the director belatedly realizing that it needs to involve more than just harping on Sabata's gambling prowess. Even the positive comments on this page admit that the plot is unfathomable in a single viewing. It's worse; it's as though they shot a bunch of random western-themed scenes, then tried to edit them into a movie. The characters are shallow Western clichés with no substance, and their motives are mostly "I'm-with-Sabata" or "I'm-with-McKintock." And what is going on, and why, is rarely explained. At one point, Clyde suddenly jump into a horse-drawn cart and make off with the loot. But he doesn't get far before his cart loses a wheel and Sabata is there to coolly chide him for his impish treachery. What, Clyde was planning to steal the loot? Why did the wheel fall off? How did Sabata know he was going to do it?
The entire film is one take after another of Someone Tries to do Something Against Sabata, leading up to Sabata Wins, Hands Down. Even when the movie bothers to explain just HOW Sabata wins, it wears too thin to hold the attention. Kind of like Superman in the Wild West, with no super-villains or Kryptonite. If you've seen one scene, you've seen the whole film. See it if you like bad movies that critics whitewash as "rollicking." But see it for free, it's not worth paying for.