The perfect storm of cartoonish bad guys. It was a blast watching them portray villain stereoptypes to a Tee. They could have been transposed to WW2 and made Nazi's and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference.
shareOne of them was in fact a German, the chap who had tha gall to shout at the First Secretary. But the Nazis extolled strength, which doesn't come from a bunch of 75 year old guys. Their leadership would have been a couple of decades younger (Hitler was what, 56 when he died?)
M
Please note, I do not want comments from housewives, students or the unemployed.
"First Secretary, vhat vould you like us to do if ve spot ze aircraft?"
"O-blit-er-ate it!"
"First Secretary, vhat vould you like us to do if ve spot ze aircraft?"
"O-blit-er-ate it!"
Why is Wolf Kahler's character listed as KGB head Andropov?
Even if this was supposed to take place pre-Brezhnev death 1982, Andropov was an ailing geriatric and Kahler's character is much younger.
And probably not too far off the mark, if you read the Cold War history that Boris Yeltsin released to the public. Liberals make films showing American Generals in the War Room as cartoonish bad guys, but that's okay.
share[Citation needed]
I actually thought that the portrayal of the Soviets avoided the standard over the top antics one would normally expect. The most over the top was the First Secretary, and even he was muted by normal standards. I think Clint went to great lengths to humanize them. Not in a morally relativistic way, but in a realistic fashion.
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A journey into the realm of the obscure: http://saturdayshowcase.blogspot.com/
I was impressed with the intelligence shown by the General Vladimirov character. It was refreshing to see someone with near-genius real time deductive capability in such a high-ranking position in the military.
I believe he was meant to provide a credible foil to Clint Eastwood's character and US and UK plans and had he not been held back by the First Secretary, he might have succeeded.
I think that's a key point right there. He very likely would've stopped Gant had the First Secretary not interfered.
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A journey into the realm of the obscure: http://saturdayshowcase.blogspot.com/
Even the First Secretary was depicted as correctly making at least a token effort to save the plane as diplomatically as possible before deciding to write it off as a loss.
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Death is the road to awe.