Article

2021-05-22 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Review of the Russian film "Tourist" by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin. Direct translation, and edited. Film was released Thursday.
[ColonelCassad] The film was shot in the genre of the current political situation based on the events that happened quite recently and are designed to reinforce the country's political position on the issues under consideration on the principle that what we are doing there is good. What our opponents are doing there is bad.

There is nothing wrong with the political conjuncture itself (all of this has been filmed, is being filmed and will be filmed); rather, it can be divided into high-quality and low-quality.

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As an example of a quality one, one can cite the American "Motherland", which successfully parasitized on the political topical and lasted as many as 8 seasons. Ours turned out to be quite good "Balkan frontier" From the Chinese - "Operation Red Sea".

If we take examples of bad opportunistic cinema, then this is, for example, our "Crimea", the American-Georgian "5 days in August" or the American "Cavalry".
As an aside, I liked "5 Days in August", which is about the war in South Ossetia
"Tourist" actually legalizes the topic of PMCs on the big screen, which formally do not exist in the Russian Federation, but which have been rolling around hot countries for a long time solving various near-state problems in cases where the state is not interested in shining openly or gives some tasks to outsourcing.

In this case, we are talking about the Central African Republic, where PMCs supplement regular military advisers and train local warriors on how to accurately throw a flounder at militants Anti-Balaka, Seleka and other villians who shake local "stability" and "vertical power".

Russia returned to the Central African Republic relatively recently, confidently squeezing France out there, whose dissatisfaction with such realities is indirectly reflected in the film. Actually, the intrigues against the current authorities in the CAR, this is partly the desire of France to return everything back, when it was Paris that dominated this country, before the Russian Federation wrested part of its sphere of influence from France.

Actually, the plot of the movie is simple - there is a president of the Central African Republic convenient for Russia (and China), who will soon have elections, which should consolidate the position of the Russian Federation in the Central African Republic. There is a desire of the opponents of the Russian Federation to put another president in the CAR, with the help of local militants and mercenaries from Chad.

A batch is organized for the elections with the aim of disrupting the elections and capturing the capital. PMCs hinder this activity, helping the local military to control the situation. In the end, the "correct" president wins the elections, which guarantees the stability of the Russian Federation's positions in the CAR for the coming years.

The plot is in the spirit of the past Cold War, except perhaps without the confrontation between socialism and capitalism. In addition, the story is not fictional and you could watch the entire plot of the film last year in the news or blog posts dedicated to the African adventures of PMCs (in addition to the CAR, there was also Sudan, Libya, Mozambique ...)

The viewer is offered an easy immersion into the world of domestic PMCs through the eyes of a "first move", a former police officer who became a victim of drug fraud. At first, he does not understand well where he got to and what is happening, but gradually he is drawn into and in the end he is already a confident PMC fighter who goes on a new business trip, making a choice in favor of a "private trader" career and neglecting offers to go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and engage in drug fraud.

Because, as the film explains, PMCs are for justice. In this regard, the film offers a rather romanticized image of a "private trader", although of course everything there is somewhat more complicated than shown in the film. But for the first time, it will.

The PMCs themselves are shown as skillful professionals who are trying to turn local blacks into the likeness of soldiers and, when necessary, skillfully knock down both local militants and mercenaries from Chad. In the CAR, it was approximately the same. But not at all theaters of operations everything is so smooth - in Syria and Libya, PMCs suffered losses and their exploits (under the same Palmyra or Akerbat) usually remain behind the scenes, since they do not officially exist.

But whoever is interested in the topic knows that these people are quite real, many of them at one time fought as volunteers in Donbass in 2014-2015, contributing to the creation of the DPR and LPR. So from the point of view of legalizing such a phenomenon as PMCs in the public consciousness, the film is definitely a breakthrough, even if here they are hiding behind the term "instructors".

On the technical side.
The picture is quite nice, the body kit of the PMCs is authentic, the frames with them are difficult to distinguish from real videos and photographs from the Central African Republic - viewers will be happy. As they write, this is because real PMCs were filmed in the film, so the issues of life and equipment are shown very well.

Of interest are the personnel of the CAR itself, frankly speaking, far from the most famous country in our country. A beautiful country with devastation and social hell.

The monument to the unforgettable Bokassa shown at the very beginning, as it were, hints that in this country, in fact, little changes for a simple negro.

The music was not particularly impressive. Sounds of shooting are sound.

The action scenes are average, at the level of the average series about the war in the Caucasus. There are extras of blacks in the film, but it was certainly not worth expecting something impressive from her.

In general, now we can say that there are no PMCs and the law on PMCs in Russia, and there are already films about the exploits of PMCs in Africa. Russia is a country of contrasts.

The cinema itself, of course, is not a masterpiece for all time - if you remove the political topicality and the novelty of the topic of PMCs in the cinema, then this is an average military action movie at a time. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting to watch, which is not a frequent occurrence for modern Russian cinema.
The lead character's call sign is Tourist.
The film has already appeared in the public domain. You can see it here.
All in Russian

Trailer is here, in Russian but translatable.

Posted by badanov 2021-05-22 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

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