This movie is anti-russian propaganda.
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andreasaysyes — 17 years ago(September 20, 2008 08:13 AM)
SPOILERS AHEAD!: I couldn't tell, from the beginning, if the Americans were going to be portrayed as the "good guys" or as churchy goody two-shoes. I was happy when the director made the decision, right before Jessie kills Carlos, to have him say "i wouldn't hurt you" again, right before she killed him. But then the film turned and went into Americans-as-the-World's Saviours territory when she was vindicated at the end by learning that Carlos was, indeed, a sexual predator. That really really annoyed me. So what, we're supposed to feel that she did a good job by taking out the bad guy? This film shouldn't have ended as it did. As soon as they decided to bust out of the prison it all got completely ridiculous.
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roell29 — 17 years ago(November 21, 2008 09:07 PM)
I thought it was more complex than that. Jessie tried to put her past behind her by becoming the antithesis of her former self. In the end, she realises that she can't cancel out her past without falling (like the detached train), and she eventually transforms into a more realistic synthesis. I didn't see it as pro-American propaganda either, though I am very sensitive to it's prevalence generally. Remember that Abby did turn out to be the cold-blooded killer that Ben Kingsley's character had described earlier. I more or less assumed the kind of corruption depicted in the film is understood to exist everywhere, unfortunately, and the last scene showing Abby retrieving the money supports that notion.
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andrea-kathleen — 15 years ago(July 09, 2010 12:20 AM)
I have to agree. Wasn't there just ONE spanish guy? How can you draw a stereotype out of that? And not all the Russians were portrayed as evil at all. Drunks, maybe, but not evil.
And Abby was also an American and the movie definitely left it open for her to be a 'bad guy'. -
zap644 — 17 years ago(December 24, 2008 11:27 PM)
Your prejudices preceded you in your interpretation of this film, I believe.
I did not see such generalizations. There were a lot of average Russians in the film. The ones involved in the plot happened to be bad, BUT compassionate - did you not notice that Ilia (the cop) spared the Americans and shot his much more evil cohort?
There was ONE Spaniard in the film - ONE! Sure, he was a bad guy, but you somehow take that ONE guy as an indictment against all Spaniards AND other "Mediteranians" [sic]?
There were THREE Americans in the film. One was innocent, the other 2 were questionable. One of them murdered the Spaniard, FFS. It may have started off as self-defense, but it was murder because the last few blows were clearly NOT self-defense.
So if I were to take such a prejudicial viewpoint on this film as you and others have it would be that it is ANTI-American propaganda portraying us as either naive, murderers or conniving drug-runners using anyone they could to get ahead.
As for your WWII comments, yes Russia lost a lot more people in that war, but did you happen to notice that the Nazis invaded Russia and had troops on their soil? That kind of thing tends to lead to a lot of deaths.
I don't want to get into a big argument of whether or not the Nazis could have been defeated without our help, but I don't see anything in history about Europe telling us our help wasn't needed between 1941 and 1945.
And as far as Japan goes? Yeah - Russia backed off until we beat them into surrender and then tried to take all the credit for it.
I know who I think the bad guys are (and I don't think it's Europe or Russia or even most of the rest of Asia, Africa or South America). Are you trying to say that Americans are REALLY the bad guys?
I don't agree with a lot of our policies, particularly the part about giving 6 digits worth of dollars to the Taliban in 2001 - oh, did you not remember that my tax dollars get spread around the world on a regular basis?
How about how Russia recently blocking imports of American products from certain manufacturers without ANY explanation whatsoever?
Oh, you didn't know about that?
I for one would LOVE to stop ALL of my tax dollars going to foreign countries. We've got enough problems to deal with here at home for me to be putting food on your table and when foreign countries pull this protectionism BS, I say we respond in kind. -
Kawada_Kira — 14 years ago(October 03, 2011 09:15 AM)
And as far as Japan goes? Yeah - Russia backed off until we beat them into surrender and then tried to take all the credit for it.
Um, no. The Soviets made a deal with the U.S and Britain much earlier on, in which they agreed that they would enter the war with Japan 3 months after the defeat of Germany. This is because all their troops and tanks and everything were on the Western front and they needed time to get everyone and everything over to the East, which they could only start doing once Germany was beaten. They kept their promise. Three months to the day after Germany's surrender, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and stormed Manchukuo with over 1,600,000 men fresh from the war in Europe. The fact that Japan was already almost beaten had nothing to do with it. They made the deal, 3 months. Also, the USSR's entry into the Pacific war DID have a part in getting Japan to surrender, because in losing Manchukuo, Japan lost over a million troops and also its largest industrial region outside of the Japanese home islands, and faced imminent invasion from two directions at once (the Americans from the south, the Soviets from the north).
I don't know what you're talking about with your claim that the Soviet Union tried to take credit for winning the whole Pacific war. I'd love to see a source for that claim, because it sounds pretty absurd to me.
Formerly known as Communism_is_the_Future -
gherahtraitte — 17 years ago(September 13, 2008 03:16 PM)
Jesus, people, why even talking about it? that is a movie, just a movie, not a documentary. In that case we should be also afraid of Aliens and Zombies. "Alien" could be anti-alien propaganda.
By the way, i am alien with a sympathy for neither of countries.
The world could be so much better if people understand what is fiction and what is not.
"Pudding Alice, Alice Pudding" -
KyleGoetz — 17 years ago(September 14, 2008 12:32 AM)
The hotel people, the waitress in the dining car, and the Russian military men were all nice. Actually, I recall the people on the train (the "drunkards") as very friendly as well.
And I don't know if you noticed, but Roy was a "drunkard" as well.