Poidut russkie

Alan Arkin died the other day, so I decided to change up my schedule of what I wanted to post about by watching one of his movies that I hadn't seen before. I found that his first Oscar-nominated role in The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming is available on various streaming platforms, so I sat down to watch that and do a review of it here.

A Soviet sub is patrolling the waters somehwere off the Atlantic coast of the United States. The submarine's captain (Theodore Bikel) notices that according to their charts, they're not very far from Gloucester Island, which serves as a stand-in for something like Nantucket. The captain has never seen America in the flesh, so he orders the crew to position the sub closer to the coast where they can surface and see the country through the periscope. However, the waters are unfamiliar to them, so the sub runs aground on a shoal just off the coast. Now, in normal circumstances, one could call for a tugboat or some such to move them off the shoal. But this is a Soviet sub in American waters, which would create a serious political incident.

With that in mind, the captain, along with the sub's political officer, Rozanov (Alan Arkin), decide that the best idea would be to try to go ashore with a skeleton crew and commandeer a motorboat to pull the sub off the shoal, hoping that nobody will notice since they don't want to cause an incident. Rozanov finds those who can speak at least some English, and prepares to take them ashore.

Needless to say, the mission doesn't go to plan. Staying on the island during the shoulder season is would-be playwright Walt Whittaker (Carl Reiner), who is there with his wife Elspeth (Eva Marie Saint) and two children. The son is one of those Boomers who grew up during the "duck and cover" era and who wants to be a red-blooded American, which means hating commies. He spots the sailors although at first he doesn't realize they're Soviets, just that they're different and have guns. He tries to get Dad to listen to him, but that doesn't happen until...

Rozanov and his men come knocking at the door of the Whittaker place, eventually leaving behind one man, Kolchin (John Philip Law) to hold the Whittakers hostage while the rest of the crew looks for a boat they can use. Meanwhile, some of the Soviets get to the main telephone exchange, Gloucester being an isolated island because the only access is by ferry. The panicked switchboard operator calls the police chief, Link Mattocks (Brian Keith) to tell him that the Russians are comming, but of course he doesn't believe this at first and has no idea what the hell is going on. A game of operator (pun intended) ensues while the small population of Americans who overwinter on the island try to figure out what's going on while the Soviets try to get their sub unstuck. A subplot involves Kolchin falling in love with Alison, a friend of the Whittakers.

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming got as much critical love as it did, including those Oscar nominations. It's not exactly a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also not the sort of movie you'd think of as Oscar material. More than that, it feels like a bit of a one-note movie. The cast, including Arkin, all do well with the material they've been given, although I felt they could have been given better material.

It's also easy to see why this is the sort of movie that Boomers would absolutely love, since it plays to all their stereotypical Cold War experiences. One other thing worth noting is the authenticity of the Russian-language dialog. Apparently the producers and director Norman Jewison were able to find quite a few stars who had some knowledge of the Russian language or at least other Slavic languages. On the other hand, I was irritated by the stereotypical use of the Russian letters Я and И to replace R and N in the opening titles, but that's just me.

If you want a farce that will take you back in time, you could definitely do a lot worse than to watch The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming.