Recently I took a flight from Moscow to Bangkok.
I was scrolling through the inflight movie options when this 80’s aesthetic movie poster caught my eye. It caught it good. (Later, I found out this was a historically significant movie in the Soviet Union times.)
I had just popped a Valium (from my Cambodia stash) and figured this would be the perfect movie to watch as I drifted into pharmaceutically induced relaxation.
In Soviet Russia, movie pirates you…
In the movie, a Soviet cargo ship crew are transporting a load of medical opium back to the USSR. They are attacked by well armed pirates who leave them to die on their sinking ship. They escape and must fight the pirates for survival.
The story was written by Boris Durov and Stanislav Govorukhin, and directed by Boris Durov. It was the most popular movie in the Soviet Union in 1980.
Watching this movie made me wish that I lived just a few decades earlier – when there were surplus WWII weapons floating around and you could get away with these kind of shenanigans without satellites tracking your every move.
All the elements of a good action movie
The first Soviet movie in the banned “Hollywood Action Style”
While researching this article, I learned that “Hollywood Action Style” movies were previously banned in the Soviet Union. This movie was the first of its kind permitted as Soviet regulations loosened.
It certainly didn’t feel like any Russian movie I had seen before. They were clearly looking to Hollywood for inspiration. However, it didn’t feel like an American movie either. It had its own vibe.
You can watch for free on YouTube!
Interested in Russian movies?
Fortunately, MANY Russian movies can be found online – free to watch. You can find whole YouTube channels of them.
When I was studying Russian, I watched a lot of Russian movies at sovietmoviesonline.com. You can watch for free and they have many subtitle options.
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