Midnight in Moscow is sunshine in L.A.

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2015)

In this old Chris de Burgh song, an ironic one - I would just say, quite a sweet and a nice one - those meaningful words are solemnly spoken by an American spy on night out in a bar in Moscow; this one realises like nobody's business a truism as old as the hills: thou wouldn't grasp Russia with mind, but thou fool, no living man may hinder Russia as it is able to ruin anyone with its love No way, a Westerner would not grasp 'mystifying Russian soul', but since Russia, like it or not, as fate of history had willed it and at the price of several tens of millions of lives, assured the undisputed runners-up title in the world order, subjects of pragmatic and liberal Western world have nothing to do but to have little liking for and, rather, a dread of, that second-place echelon which breathes down their necks. That is about par for the course, so humanly: disliking one's rivals, grudging neighbours their success And if it came to pass, competitive neighbours lead their lives not exactly what one understand by 'civilised development' - the Lord himself, however culpable it would sound, has commanded to detest them!
But hey, all the aforesaid is indeed a truism as old as the hills! Why then folks in Russia are jumping on a Western film about them?! Where have all those faultfinders not gone over: from Red Army insignia discrepancy to error of fact regarding Khrushchev; from ethnic dissimilarity causing Western actors' inability to play Russians - to scriptwriters' unawareness of Stalingrad Tractor Plant layout plan I could have defeated each point completely; could have given such a rebuke to each one, that each one would realise one's criticism would not stand up to criticism itself (to make a clean breast of it - their criticism isn't worth a tinker's curse!), but I would rather dwell on just two moments of truth. Just those very things (again, that is about par for the course) arouse indignation of those who get indignant at the film's dubious scenes and forget the saying 'if the cap fits, wear it'. That is: barrier troops in operation and bawdiness as between the male and female protagonists
Now listen to this, misters, if you got enraged when Western film-makers had shown too literal sense of war, moreover - of the most awful war of all times (this sense is: if you have been called up for fighting for your land, but chicken out, then you would better have both hands run over by a tram, otherwise you will have to hurl yourself at the enemy and not to retreat in confusion), that means not only that you have never been to war, but have not been interested in it. Or have always taken a rose-coloured view of war - as if it were something like an amusing shooting game. Like Wolfenstein, the extravagant plot of which - an American superhero overwhelms Hitler the robot - BTW, was so popular that just that very action game got rise to one of computer game main genres altogether, a 3D action. Well, I understand those who prefer living blissfully unaware of what the world order really is: witnesses are to be rubbed out! The present writer has never been to war but belongs to currently combatant nation, Russia. As Donbass War is in fact a moment of truth in its own manner: slyboots are being unmasked, righteous indignation is being reasoned, hackneyed existential fear tends to well up within; and finally, it is now turn of cynical and odious propaganda masterminds, who sooner or later, put a question with an edge to everyone: Who are you with, daredevil? He that is not with his nation is against it, thus a public enemy supposed to go through repressions.
And as for casual sex among the bodies of soldiers sleeping side by side - it is 'elementary, my dear Watson' (as Sherlock Holmes would say) at all. I hold in high respect centuries-old culture of Christianity, where one must love none but god and, a fortiori, even the idea of desecrating the battlefield with sexual behaviour is impermissible! But isn't it high time for the fig-leaf to to go out of fashion?! You whom it sickens, turn aside. But you would neither deny that there was still sex at the Eastern Front! And indeed, many women cohabited with rear staff officers and took sulphapyridine (they believed ability to cause unwanted child's misbirth of that remedy for infection) on the sly while their husbands were dying on active service.
However, I am going to bat for the film I used to watch more than once and still honour, not to vex those who, seemingly, treat it as untouchable. I just want to thank the West in these latter days of extraordinarily dramatic events for it, notwithstanding the unremitting animosity towards us, pays a tribute to us as to the potential adversary No 1 and shoots (attention! - first and foremost, for domestic market, thus for forming public opinion in their own countries!) high-budget films, where it is not an American flag that is waved, but a Soviet one. And thus a film-goer supports not Rambo, who kills thugs, who weari Soviet uniform, outright and on the spot, but the high-minded Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev who, notwithstanding all the totalitarian atrocities of his Motherland, loves it and shoots his coarse rifle accurately killing the invading aliens, who wear full-dress uniform and declaim with bombast that they came to 'exempt Russia from Jewish political instructors and that bloody Stalin, the arsonist and the murderer'