"Phantom's" opening scene is of Harris, the veteran submarine commander, taking in the sights of the harbor of the Soviet submarine base at Rybachiy supposedly in the 1960s or so while standing on the bow of a tugboat. This scene required one actor - Harris. There are still plenty of former-Soviet harbors that look now much like they would have looked then - a few new ships but a lot of rusty stuff and old soviet or soviet-like equipment. But no, the budget apparently didn't have what was necessary to fly one actor and one film crew to such a location for a day to get a plausible shot, so instead he's clearly in an ultra-modern container port. The difference is enough to be noticed by anybody.
Thus Phantom starts out on a bad note... and gets progressively worse. There is a lot to criticize in this movie--screenplay, plot, acting, and dialogue (the latter resorting to "I am the bad guy and now will give the grand exposition of my plot" moments). Much has been covered elsewhere, including the fact that whoever wrote this crap obviously knows near zero about how soviet people behaved, talked, looked, etc. However, for my personally, the absolute biggest scorn I leave for the set designers / prop people / costume people for absolutely mailing it in. Old soviet artifacts are easy to find, but instead it seems that somebody simply raided a souvenir store full of kitsch. FOr example, when ed Harris takes a drink from a flak of alcohol, the flask has one of those big red stars on it like you might find only in a post-1991 souvenir shop selling fake or newly-manufactured soviet kitsch. When somebody decided that soviet submariners wear blue and white striped turtlenecks, somebody went out and got one at the GAP. Correspondingly (and especially coupled with the American accents and, much much worse, American MANNERISMS that predominate), nothing about this movie feels even vaguely 'soviet' (or even 'period' for that matter, as there are well too many anachronisms).
it's a low budget movie all around sunk further by mail-it-in effort by all involved. in fairness, i'd find it hard to get excited to work on a movie based on a script apparently written by a 12 year old as well. The only 'good' part of this movie is reasonable technical submarine jargon cribbed from better, albeit American-submarine-based movies.
Harris and Duchovniy collected their paycheck and in fairness did what they could, but nothing can save this forgettable mess of a movie. If you feel that you'd like to see a decent (imperfect, but much much better than this) cold war movie that may be new to you, try 'the Bedford incident' (1965).
Thus Phantom starts out on a bad note... and gets progressively worse. There is a lot to criticize in this movie--screenplay, plot, acting, and dialogue (the latter resorting to "I am the bad guy and now will give the grand exposition of my plot" moments). Much has been covered elsewhere, including the fact that whoever wrote this crap obviously knows near zero about how soviet people behaved, talked, looked, etc. However, for my personally, the absolute biggest scorn I leave for the set designers / prop people / costume people for absolutely mailing it in. Old soviet artifacts are easy to find, but instead it seems that somebody simply raided a souvenir store full of kitsch. FOr example, when ed Harris takes a drink from a flak of alcohol, the flask has one of those big red stars on it like you might find only in a post-1991 souvenir shop selling fake or newly-manufactured soviet kitsch. When somebody decided that soviet submariners wear blue and white striped turtlenecks, somebody went out and got one at the GAP. Correspondingly (and especially coupled with the American accents and, much much worse, American MANNERISMS that predominate), nothing about this movie feels even vaguely 'soviet' (or even 'period' for that matter, as there are well too many anachronisms).
it's a low budget movie all around sunk further by mail-it-in effort by all involved. in fairness, i'd find it hard to get excited to work on a movie based on a script apparently written by a 12 year old as well. The only 'good' part of this movie is reasonable technical submarine jargon cribbed from better, albeit American-submarine-based movies.
Harris and Duchovniy collected their paycheck and in fairness did what they could, but nothing can save this forgettable mess of a movie. If you feel that you'd like to see a decent (imperfect, but much much better than this) cold war movie that may be new to you, try 'the Bedford incident' (1965).