Behold the miniseries that caused so much controversy that automotive mogul Lee Iaccoca (God rest his soul) yanked out all of his Chrysler commercials, cable television mogul Ted Turner (Mr. CNN himself) responded with what he called "alternative programming" on his network, and the Kremlin lodged several protests with the ABC bigwigs (they wanted the miniseries made). AMERIKA is set in the then-future year 1997, in the aftermath of the conquest of the United States by the Soviet Union; it's not specified how the takeover occurred, though one of the protagonists mentions "some magnetism in the sky". Although the President is still in office at the White House and Congress is still in session, they are nothing more than puppets operated by those rascally Russkies. All of the citizenry are kept in line by United Nations Special Service Units, controlled by the Soviets. The occupation is seen through the eyes of such people as Devin Milford (Kris Kristofferson), a former activist brutalized by his sentence in a Texas gulag and in whom the flame of freedom still burns; Peter Bradford (Robert Urich), a pragmatic politician who walks the fine line between taking care of the farming community of Milford, Nebraska and pleasing his Red bosses; Marion Andrews (Christine Lahti who delivered an icy portrayal), Devin Milford's vindictive ex-wife who has custody of their two sons and who collaborated with the Soviets in a campaign to betray her husband; Colonel Andrei Denisov (Sam Neill), whose job is to pacify the United States by splitting the nation into separate countries and turning part of the Midwest into the nation of Heartland with Peter Bradford in charge. By the way, Denisov's mistress (Mariel Hemingway) is a rebellious actress. AMERIKA ends with the Heartland rebels blowing up the Soviet troops stationed outside Milford while Devin Milford commits suicide. This was a labor of love for Donald Wrye who had made the sleazoid classic BORN INNOCENT (1974) starring Linda Blair; he busted his hump wriring AMERIKA's script. There is plenty of grown-up dialogue and plenty of expository scenes, and a heart-wrenching look at a Midwestern community under foreign occupation. If you are looking for a RAMBO-type movie where the citizenry get into a nonstop battle with the Soviets, you will have to look elsewhere. Donald Wrye's heart was certainly in the right place but there were more loose ends than an explosion in a dress factory. AMERIKA was going to be followed by a prime time series that never came to be. It was well photographed by Hiro Narita, and shot on location primarily in Toronto and in rural Canada, with some scenes filmed in Tecumseh, Nebraska, Washington DC, and Chicago. The music was composed by Basil Poledouris, and the visual effects were supervised by John Dykstra; his name is not listed in the credits in IMDB, but he did the deed. Referencing the "magnetism in the sky", if you read the novelization by Brauna E. Pouns, there is a greatly detailed explanation for how the Russians managed to conquer the United States: the Russkies launched four intercontinental ballistic missiles and parked the warheads in orbit above the United States, then detonated the warheads so that an electromagnetic pulse fricaseed the United States' power grid, knocking out all electricity and causing a nationwide blackout; the President had no choice but to surrender. I had been wondering who had written the novelization under the byline of Brauna E. Pouns. Well, according to the Goodreads website, the actual author is Patrick Anderson, a former Presidential speech writer who had ginned up a series of bestselling mainstream and suspense novels from the 1970s to the early 1990s and is currently a book critic for the Washington Post. And until somebody tells me that I'm wrong and somebody else wrote as Brauna E. Pouns, I'll go with my little research. AMERIKA was issued on videocassette in 1995 by Anchor Bay Entertainment (try to find that today; yeah good luck with that). As it turns out, somebody has posted the entire miniseries on YouTube. There was a time during the 1990s when the United States and Russia had a chummy-chummy relationship and that was when Boris Yeltsin was running the show. But these days when there seems to be a new Cold War between both countries and Vladimir Putin can't seem to quit acting up, just maybe AMERIKA deserves a second look. Something to think about, anyway.
Review of Amerika
