SMalamud

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 am not a huge fan of musical comedies, musical action films or musical romances, and this movie is all of it in one. One should expect the characters to break into a song at any time during the movie as it is basically a filmed operette, loosely wrapped around the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas. Think 'The King and I' in Russian. Nothing unusual, however, for many Russian movies of the time. Songs were probably the only and the best sound effect available to Soviet directors back then.

However, in this particular movie everything fits in pretty nicely. Boyarsky's good looks (I dare anyone to find a better D'Artagnan in any film), Tabakov's silliness as Louis XIII, even Terekhova's acting as Milady. Credit is due to Yungvald-Khilkevich for putting it all together. The songs, written just for the movie, fit perfectly into the plot, and have become Russian classics, instantly recognized by anyone even now, 20 years later (pun intended).

The action sequences are quite good, the cinematography is beautiful, Porthos is lovable, Constance is a knockout. What else do you want from a musketeer movie?