User reviews

After 2016 and the sell out of the GOP to the current Russian regime, this movie is becoming a documentary.

We (my Dad and I) taped the AMERIKA miniseries on its premiere air dates and I'm so glad we did. I've read a couple reviews here at IMdB that claim this milestone is boring. I believe they are misinterpreting the decided communist slant of this production. The production seems off-kilter because of it is presented through "a weary and wintry Russian eye", which might be compared to the powerless angst of the Russian characters of the Dr. Zhivago film. The characters are all doomed to communism and it's fascinating to view their ways of coping. Kristofferson and Urich are both powerhouses in this vein. My favorite theme is the outlawing of sentimental media, my favorite scene when Mariel Hemingway attends the illegal performance of "The Fantasticks". Shades of George Orwell's "1984", about a communist state where things that are illegal for the masses are allowed (but not admittedly) for the elite party members. So I say "God Bless AMERIKA". I think I'll watch it again next week.

"Amerika" had potential, but squandered it in a storyline that made no sense and in characters that made even less sense.

I watched this miniseries when it was broadcast, and taped it thinking it would be something worth keeping. I've never been inclined to view those tapes, because the non-sequitors were annoying the first time through.

This was a dreadful production. It isn't obscure because it was controversial, it's obscure because it's dreadful. The Russians are in charge, but why does that mean there is no running water? I kept waiting for the story to go somewhere, for Kris Kristopherson to start acting (never happened!), for some character, somewhere to make me care what happened to them.

This miniseries is not a suppressed gem. It's a well-ignored waste of time, talent, and potential.

What a great relic of the Cold-War era! An excellent piece for classroom discussions of the American mentality during this period of recent history. If only it were more easily available at a more affordable price. It seems this set is not selling at the Wal-Mart bin-price for a mini-series that has received such poor reviews from the kind visitors of IMDb. Like "Red Dawn," "1984" and other "paranoia" films of the 1980s, this one lives up to its name. Yes, it's slow, but it wasn't supposed to be a Rambo-type flick. Try to appreciate it for what it represented when it came out. A very courageous project for its time, IMHO. I think that it's time for a re-make with a "different" kind of "scary" foreign-occupier (can you guess what I'm thinking?) It could easily be titled, "Ameriqa."

I remember watching this back in the day and tried to rewatch it recently. It's still bad. You can see what they are trying to do and the concept isn't bad. However, it is handled poorly and in the most bland manner possible.

You never get a good idea of how this all happened and that is necessary for a film like this.

Meanwhile, the personal stories are dull and uninteresting. None of the characters are ones you want to root for.

Scenes are padded out to extend the length of the series for no apparent reason. Two or three hours could easily be trimmed.

Sadly, it is a depressing and dull series.

Having spent some years on the dark side of the Iron Curtain, I was amazed to see how well Donald Wrye has constructed his "What If?" tale. This is the way Russians behave on their good days. AMERIKA presents a sanitized version of the way Russia has, under csar and commissar, ruthlessly crushed other cultures and civilizations. For two centuries Russia expanded its control by the land size of a Belgium per year. It has never produced anything anyone wanted beyond raw materials, these from stolen lands. It has prospered by the ability of its army to take goods from other countries. It is instructive for Americans to see what might have been their fate had Russia dealt with them as they had with Poles, Estonians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Tartars, Chechens, Khazhaks, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Chechs, Slovaks, Lativaks, Yakuts. Just watching AMERIKA gives one a feeling of gratitude to Reagan, JP II, Solidarity, the American people, and the others who brought the Evil Empire down.

What a pity that, following our victory over the Soviets, the neocons and neoMarxists have now rushed in to seize power in the United States according to Antonio Gramsci's "indirect approach" of taking over the universities, media, and lumpen intelligentsia. They have brought us to a needless war with Islam. Americans today have little more power than the citizens of Amerika. Our treasure and the lives of our young soldiers are being drawn off to fight a war in Mesopotamia to serve dark and sinister forces unconcerned about the future of the United States.

Undoubtedly a large production, with a star-studded cast. However, the script is so muddled and nonsensical that nothing can salvage the feeling of a totally garbled series. There is no sense to what is happening, too many subplots are unclear, undeveloped and unresolved (notwithstanding the 12+ hour duration). I don't think anyone understands what the Russians are up to, what the resistance is trying to achieve and how, why certain things happen. I have a feeling that the filmmakers wanted to achieve too much and just got completely lost along the way. A pity really, this could and should have been much better.

Forgive me, but when this was first shown on TV, the reaction from the public was with a collective yawn. American audiences just weren't ready for a TWELVE HOUR movie, and the Nielsen ratings for the series were embarrassingly low (If I remember correctly, they were the lowest for any mini-series). There was a paperback book tie-in with the mini-series, which was released several days before the TV show began (Can you say "give away the plot"?). What little I saw of AMERIKA when it was originally broadcast was as exciting as watching paint dry, and the series was savaged in the press as being the work of paranoid imaginations.

What I took as being very odd is that the patriotic hero was played by Kris Kristofferson, a man who has championed many liberal-to-left political causes that the most patriotic fans of this mini-series would oppose.

It's been said that a work of genius is never fully appreciated when first released to the public. It's also been said that people will read their own interpretations into the most innocuous of things. Patriotic epic or paranoid raving? Make your own decision about this mini-series.

I remember when this dreadful mini-series first played. There was tons of controversy over it which immediately disappeared after the series aired (people saw how boring and pointless it was). The premise is a good one (Russia taking over America) but this was basically boring! It moved at a snails pace. I watched the whole thing hoping it would get better but it never did. The script and characters were hopeless--nonstop clichés that I've seen hundreds of times before. They had some great actors in this (like Christine Lahti) giving their worst performances. It's not available in any format for a good reason--who would buy it? Maybe the 16 or so people here who are giving it a good rating would purchase it but nobody else. This mini deserves the obscurity it has. A 1 all the way.

This was written with a Cold War mentality. It was written in response to The Day After 1983. Hollywood have a Battle. They both would be a great study in the mindset of the time. A great idea to watch both with your children or grandchildren and let them know about your family and what they thought about it. 19 members of my family including cousins, and myself served during the Cold War including every major hot part. It sounds like someone who is a communist sympathizer wrote a review. There is a lot of talk about a national divorce, this might be what it would look like. .

I watched this when it was first broadcast, living at the time in Washington DC, where the press was harrumphing about what a dangerous, subversive, anti-social act it would be to watch this paranoid fantasy. Naturally, such indignation made me even more eager to see it. By the time I'd gotten to Day 4 of this dog's breakfast, I was stupefied with boredom, but kept going until the end, convinced that no filmmaker could invest this much time into a project and not have a terrific payoff at the end, to compensate for the glacial buildup. No such luck. The show ended as it started, a colossal waste of time.

I've read that this was based on a story originally by Ben Stein, who still finds the memory of the way it was slaughtered too painful to talk about. The brainless lefty, Kris Kristofferson, when asked why he took such an uncharacteristic role (leader of a revolt against Soviet overlords of a conquered America) answered that he did it because he thought another actor might have been able to do serious damage in such a role. That is, another actor might have actually done the job he was hired to do and made the role believable. No risk of Kristofferson falling into such a trap - he emotes throughout with the energy of high-speed oatmeal. Every scene seems to be on the verge of delivering something exciting and engaging, then falls lifeless to the ground.

It's hard to be sure just what was the motive behind the making of such a confused mess. But I think that people who see it as a cautionary tale are misreading the makers' intent, and forgetting the era it was made in. Coming as it did at the end of the Reagan era, I think it was Hollywood's poke in the eye at the triumphalists among the American Right, a sneering "So you think you're so good?" fantasy of a prostrate, failed America losing out to the hardier, more determined Communists. In that way, it is less a nightmare than a leftist wet dream.

I was browsing thru the screen credits for Laura Flynn Boyle and noticed she had a bit part in this mess. And then I read a comment that this mini-series was "great" and that the user couldn't understand why this was never shown again. Maybe because this series was vapid, vacuous, boring and incoherent! Who told Kris Kristoffersen he could act?! He does his best to obfuscate an already muddled plot with his usual mumbling double talk. Somehow Kris has done something (or failed to do something) that allows the Russians to take over. No real explanation is ever given. If the Russians were forced to watch this mess, they would turn tail and run! The only good part of this show is the execution of Congress! (Of course, a funnier execution is the Martian one in "Mars Attacks!") . Avoid this show at all costs!

While I was viewing this rare mini-series, I could not help thinking that it was definitely one of the best films I have ever seen. The plot was awesome, the characters were moving, and the acting was unbelievably exceptional.(Way to go Sam Neill, Robert Urich, Kris Kristofferson, and others!) However, I was a bit disappointed by the ending. A lot of conflicts that I hoped would be resolved were left open. This was a hard resolution to accept after watching about 12 hours of building suspense and anticipation.

Although I wish the ending would be different, this will still be one of my favorite films and it is really worth seeing. It would be impossible to ever again create a series even close to what this was.

I loved this epic movie because it showed the possibility of hostile takeover and the reality (more or less) of that fear. Although it deals with Russians taking over America, it could certainly be Iraq or Iran or North Korea or any hostile force in opposition with America and Democracy for all... It is certainly a real possibility in this day and age that terrorism in many forms, fears, prejudices and hostile aggression towards America can come from within America itself. We are bound to take in those that wish to immigrate, which causes a serious threat to national security on the whole as this movie predicts. I think it is appropriate to air this show again or create a remake of this movie. I would love to have the opportunity to purchase this movie and a remake of this movie showing Iraq or an unmentioned Arab country posing the same threat to America.

I saw this when it came out. It was much hyped and suggested it would be profound. Night after night I watched it. I kept waiting for it to get good, to have some emotional content or some philosophical impact. I believed it would eventually go somewhere. I was denied. By the final episode I realized I had been swindled. I remember the emotion I had after the end. I had given so much time to something that refused to pay me back. Meandering, muddling plot. No pacing. No point. To this day I have not been able to forgive Kris Kristoferson or enjoy any of his other work. A few years ago I tried the movie Millennium in which he stars, but I regretted it afterwards. If Bobby Magee comes on the radio, I have to turn it off.

I can imagine President George IV sr sitting with his advisors following the colossal defeat in the 1992 election pleading with them to tell him one major accomplishment of the first bush regime. A timorous lackey stammered: in the Bush regime the US became the world's leading super-power. And what did I do to cause that? asks Bush the elder. Nothing came the reply; the USSR went bankrupt.

By the time of the first Gulf War, the US and USSR were like two drunks staggering home from a bar after a night of carousing. It was only a question of which would stumble first.

Amerika tells the story of the alternative history. What if it had been the other way around? There's a picture of much of the debasement and exploitation that accompanies subjugation. Good leaders end up in jail; adventurous people strike out and make a go at it elsewhere; the conquerer has no want of quislings willing to debase themselves at a price.

Amerika is the story of two families: the Bradfords and the Milfords. The Milfords for the most part oppose the occupation. Kris Kristofferson plays Devin Milford the figure around which the opposition rallies. As the story opens he is being released from jail. While his wife has sold out to the occupier, his father and his boys are active in the resistance.

The backdrop of the story is well constructed. The secret path by which the resistance moves people around is called THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD; they've adopted much of the counter-culture music of the 60s as songs of rebellion.

In the quisling corner is Robert Urich as Peter Bradford an amiable sort trying to persuade himself that he is following the right course in building the quisling state of HEARTLAND out of the central midwestern states.

Strangely the film did accurately predict what happened to our enemy inside the Soviet union when the Communists fell. It is worth revisiting.

The first 15 minutes were good, but the usually low budget, too much dioluge, and sappy made for TV quality. I watched 2 showa and the ending I could not stand the boredom this film produces. Who would have gussed in 87 that the Cold War would be over in 2 years. I guess when they open a Mc Donalds in Moscow the signs where there! 3/10

I remember when this came out. I kept thinking what if this really happened. This mini series kept me on the edge of my seat!

Certainly, after twelve long years, one tends to forget quite a bit of the content of a long movie. I'm no exception. It was hard to believe just how much I'd actually forgotten.

It remains one of the best pictures I've ever seen, from beginning to end. Theoretically, the events that occur are imaginable, the powerful acting awakens a feeling of patriotism and kinship with fellow Americans.

Although some feel the ending offers little closure, they were captivated by the plot as the rest of us were, feeling like one of the people of Milford with little else to lose but our self respect.

What can I say. . . everyone should see this movie at least once in their lives.