Well, I am Russian and I wasn?t offended with an portrayal of the Red Army in KOTCS. In fact, this movie even flatters our country: it shows unrealistically incredible power of our military forces, main troop leader?s strict discipline and straight thirst for knowledge, etc. Let?s count up compliments for Russia in this movie:
1. Russian agents took over the top secret US military base in just five minutes, without any losses in manpower.
2. Irina Spalko is clearly a great character, one of the best Indy?s enemies of all time. And she always gets what she wants.
3. Russian soldiers looks like a real people with hearts and soul (remember opening scene, when soldier driver breaks the order and joining the crazy car chase with kids), not like that gun-armed dummies in ?Rambo 3? or something.
4. Funny, but there is no criticism of communism, instead of that we got bad capitalist guy, who betrayed his friends and country for an easy money. Just like in old commie?s propaganda tales.
5. During all movie Russians never drink vodka.
Even in the camp tired soldiers just playing music and dancing. By the way, in reality they?d rather sing some nostalgic songs with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. There?s a lot of Russian songs about home, parents, love and friendship that was very popular in time of WWII. But balalaika is okay too.
6. Russians brings to Peruvian jungle a lot of impressive machines: amphibian jeeps that can survive one or two fallings from a giant waterfall, bullet-proof trucks that doesn?t get damaged by intense fire from Kalashnikovs, and, of course, absolutely fantastic Jungle-Cutter.
Of course, this movie can?t be taken seriously, and I pretty much understand that every villainy race in all Indiana Jones movies must be shown in a humorous, satirical way. But some friends of mine doesn?t get that. Here in Russia some cinema lovers were disappointed by the fact that their all-time favorite movie hero, Indiana Jones, now fighting with Soviet Union. Sure, all Soviets were commies and that?s not a great part of history to be proud of, but they also were our parents and grandfathers. And I must admit that it was much more easier for us to see Nazi Germans as bad guys.
There were many disputes in Russian message boards since 2007 or even earlier. Some of us didn?t like the idea of using Cold War theme in an Indy movie, some like it, and some didn?t care much about it. In the end, most of complaints were addressed to the fridge, monkeys and waterfalls scenes.
