As the famously psychotic Vietnam movie colonel states, “Charlie don’t surf.” He also doesn’t play well in Russia, apparently. Tom Hank’s ode to the man who started the end of the Cold War does not, of course, show the Soviet Union as a bunch of wonderful humanitarians. So, Russia is saying thanks but no thanks to distributing Charlie Wilson’s War in the heart of the former communist bloc.
The report in Variety notes that the local distributor (or non-distributor as now seems the case), UPI Russia claims that they aren’t doing this for political reasons. Rather, it’s the old capitalistic issue of dollars and cents. ”We simply decided that the film would not make a profit. Ahhhh, I love to hear those former Bolsheviks kneeling at the altar of the all-mighty dollar.
There are some people who think the fact that the Soviet-Afghan war shown in the movie makes the Russians look bad. Having seen pirated DVD’s, a few Russian bloggers have said that Soviets are shown to be killers. That’s just not nice. Everyone knows the Soviets were often not killing people; why don’t movies show all the people they didn’t brutally murder and repress? The fact that the movie is available on pirated DVD’s and took the number three spot in another former Soviet stronghold, Ukraine, makes me think the idea that it wouldn’t make money in Russia is hooey. Either way, Charlie isn’t going to surf into the Kremlin anytime soon.
