Im Alleingang

I remembered the publicity this movie received in 1986 in such publications as NEWSWEEK, and was curious to find out what it was like. I mail-ordered it from RBC Video in Brooklyn, NY. The movie, in its original Russian, reveals that the CIA appointed US Army major Jack Hessalt to be in charge of a secret missile base in the Atlantic Ocean. Jack is still troubled by memories of Vietnam, and soon goes berserk, taking control of the base and killing some crew members. Jack and his cronies commandeer a powerful missile and proceed to perform terrorism ... but they haven't counted on a rough-n-ready squad of Russian Marines who are determined to open a whole borscht-barrel of a*s-whuppin'. For an action movie, this isn't bad if you take into account that the Russian film- makers had NO access to huge Stallone- sized budgets and special effects. The level of production values for this mid-80's Soviet movie are about equal to what a mid-60's American movie would have.

SSG Dodd: I saw the same showing with you on the UH trip in May 1986! We had to make an effort to find it on the outskirts of town. Our Intourist guide Nadia helped...

Film was a blast. Warched it tonight after 35 years after finding it finally. Very funny to see how Soviets viewed us at the time. I'm sure our perspectives were just as distorted. Though it is often called "The Russian Rambo" there is very little Rambo in it. Main character is a sympathetic character just wanting to get home and see his Dad.. Plenty if weapons to identify!

SSH Dodd...hope you still have the Soviet items we traded for Leningrad...

This little action movie could be well forgotten now - finally, it is really not a gem of world's cinematography, but images of americans there are really memorable. I saw it first in Moscow cinema, being teenager, somewhere in 1986; recently I've seen it on TV, and realized with great wonder, that I really still can't find any flaws in "bad americans". Author go so far in their realism, that american missile base seems to be more technically equipped - say, I wouldn't expect such sliding doors with electronical code locks on our base.

Another noticeable thing is the fact that, AFAIK, this movie is THE ONLY Souviet film ever made which shows direct conflict between USSR and USA militaries, and even here, we have pair of quite positive americans. Compare it with endless legions of "evil russians" defeated by Rambo and other "heroes" in Hollywood movies.

This film should be required viewing for the members of that super secret American Guild Of Bad Action Moviemaking Involving Evil Russians as a lesson on how bad action movies should be made. Solo Voyage, although understanadbly lacking in special effects and high-budget eye candy (the shapely Veronika Izotova as Caroline Harrison doesn't count, as she clearly wasn't high-budget), puts to shame the high-priced American garbage like Rambo, Iron Eagle, the Delta Force and other psuedo-patriotic military nonsense. This Russian pseudo-patriotic military nonsense is, indeed, the best film in its rather forgiving genre that I have seen in many, many years. Of course, the main quality of this film is its gorgeous, amazingly convincing portrayal of Americans. To fully understand how well Solo Voyage portrays US citizens one must view all those innumerable American films with The Stereotypical Evil/Good (cirlce the correct answer) Russian Character. If you know ANYTHING about Russians (not from the movies!), please do watch Rambo and its ilk before you see the Solo Voyage. The "typical" Russian military man, according to an American film, will be between the ages of 31 and 58, bald (or sporting a crew-cut), moustachioed (or sporting a wild Czar Nicholas-style beard), constantly drinking gallons of vodka and answering to that common Russian name of Alexander Streptokokkoff, Alexei Carbohydratski or Gregor Samsa (with apologies to the Ivan Drago/Danko clan of the Siberian wilderness). I won't even mention his accent (he will have an accent, since for the convenience of the American viewing public he must speak English), which boils down to rolling his R's in a way that would make a drunken Mexican green with envy. Now look at the Americans from the Solo Voyage. I challenge you to find any flaw in them, other than bad acting, of course. Their English is perfect, their manners are genuine, their names are typical (Harrison, Robinson, Crowder), their clothes are correct (down to the University of Iowa Hawkeyes logo on a baseball cap), their evilness is believable. So believable in fact, it makes me want to pick up an AK-47 and defend the world from imperialists right now! At first I thought that the director was able to cast some American or English actors, but I was amazed to find out that all the American characters were played by Russians and Lithuanians. Actually, the least believable characters in this movie, as ironic as it is, are the Russian soldiers, mostly due to the wooden performance by the cast. Now, I strongly suspect that there are many more Russians in America than there are Americans in Russia. This is why it's so hard to understand why this 1985 Soviet film portrays Americans so accurately, while its US counterparts could never come up with a Russian character more realistic that a Superman-comic villain.

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.