The Detached Mission

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The Detached Mission
NYT: "El "Rambo" Sovietico Arrasa… America Tiembla…"
Directed byMikhail Tumanishvili
Written byYevgeni Mesyatsev
StarringMikhail Nozhkin
Aleksandr Fatyushin
Sergei Nasibov
Nartai Begalin
CinematographyBoris Bondarenko
Edited bySvetlana Lyashinskaya
Music byViktor Babushkin
Distributed byMosfilm
Release date
  • 1985 (1985)
Running time
96 minutes
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian

The Detached Mission sometimes translated as Solo Voyage or Solo Journey (

action film
, directed by Mikhail Tumanishvili. In official U.S. Navy parlance, the term "одиночное плавание" corresponds to "independent steaming".

Plot

During the Cold War, a television news journalist aboard the American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz explains the scenario of current fleet exercise of the United States Navy in the central Pacific Ocean. During a live broadcast from the bridge of the Nimitz, the correspondent points out a fleet of "Russian" (Soviet) warships on the horizon commanded by Vice Admiral Chernov.

At the same time, a

false flag attack
on a third-party ocean liner, sink it, and make it look like the Soviets have done that.

While the American and Soviet ships track each other, a Soviet frigate with a detachment of

Soviet Naval Infantry
aboard, under command of Major Shatokhin, is 1,500 miles to the south and prepares to return to their home base from a detached mission (independent steaming exercise).

After arriving at an American military base, Hessalt receives a secret order to launch a missile with a conventional warhead at a passenger cruise ship. A group of CIA and military officers goes golfing together with influential American

defense contractors
.

After Hessalt finds out that he and his men are actually expendable and most likely to be assassinated immediately after the completion of their mission, he goes ballistic and takes full control of the base, arming a

nuclear warhead
instead of conventional one, and prepares to strike the Soviet squadron so he and his henchmen could escape from the island and disappear among the ensuing chaos.

Meanwhile, an American hipster-lookalike couple, a local airline pilot and his wife, spend their honeymoon on the island near the missile base. Hessalt orders his men to eliminate the witnesses. The woman is killed, but the man managed to escape, shortly thereafter teaming up with the Soviets to punish the villains.

After the Soviet Chief of Naval Staff finds out that Hessalt is acting on his own, he orders Major Shatokhin and his detachment to proceed upon a search and destroy mission to find and neutralize the missile launch site. The Soviets face the difficult task to prevent possible World War III.

Significance

The Detached Mission was filmed and released shortly after the second

Rambo installment was released, and according to many observers was the Soviet Union's response to that film.[1] According to the lead actor, Mikhail Nozhkin
, this was the last anti-American Soviet movie filmed before the Soviet leadership ordered an end to anything that might irritate the U.S. Government. In a 2006 interview, Nozhkin said,

...they didn't let us film, Gorbachev was already in power, which means chaos had started. A movie on a military theme, and we couldn't get arms, they say, "Here's a Makarov pistol, that's it." They wouldn't give us anything in order to avoid offending the overseas "friends": we are all for peace and so on.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Галина Седых (November 2006). "МИХАИЛ НОЖКИН: "ДА ВОСКРЕСНЕТ РОДИНА МОЯ!"". Газета "Прогноз развития".

External links