Wow, Paul, those are the stirring strains of the soundtrack from the film The Soldier by Tangerine Dream, a band I actually really like. This played over the most interminable ski chase of all time. Like it just went on and on and on for what seemed like half my lifetime. How are you, Paul?

I'm great. That certainly is a vibe that we just started with.

It's a vibe, right?

A vibe that contrasts startlingly with one of the most unusual 80s Cold War action thrillers I've ever seen that's just surprisingly languid.

Languid. That is such a great word to describe it.

Action thriller.

What a relaxing movie this was, huh? Like it literally, you know, like it was just on and then it just kept happening. I went and I made a Thanksgiving meal about halfway through the movie and it was just still happening when I came back. It was phenomenal.

One might say even to echo our previous episode, a leisurely, a leisurely action thriller.

You know, Paul, you know how like, you know how like you're on TikTok or like Instagram or Poofling or Wombie, whatever the fuck the kids do now.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

And there's always somebody, you know, somebody probably our age who's gotten to social media services, reposting a clip of, I don't know, like George Lucas or Martin Scorsese and they're talking about, you know, protecting our film heritage and how 98% of the films made before 1950 have all vanished because the silver nitrate is actively decaying and is so flammable. This is the kind of movie that makes me think, is that a bad thing?

Oh, oh, Javi, you wound, not me necessarily, but I mean, surely you wound people involved with this very spasmodically ambitious exercise.

Yeah, exercise is a word for it. Paul, I think now would be a good time for me to say that I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

Oh, I, right. I think I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And I believe this is...

Multiplex Overthruster! Summer of 82.

Wow, so Paul, we are talking today about a movie called The Soldier.

The Soldier!

Not soldier, like Kurt Russell in the great Paul WS. Anderson film of the, I believe, early aughts, but the soldier. This guy isn't just a lumpen soldier, this guy is definitive as a soldier, I think.

Apparently so, definitive in the most assertively generic way.

Oh my God, is it ever, yeah, right?

And I think we need to clarify the tagline from the poster. This is his code name, code name is the soldier.

Code name the soldier.

You don't assign him, you unleash him.

You unleash him.

Yes.

Apparently not anyone in the film, but you.

Yes.

You're so disposed because I don't feel like anyone in this movie unleashed him at all. He seemed quite leashed.

It begs the question. Just as a wish-fulfillment thought exercise, Javi, if you had the ability at, say, the push of a button or the activation of a hotline, yes, to unleash the soldier, what carnage would you unleash upon the world?

If I could just unleash the soldier. I mean, aside from world peace and all of that.

Yes. Wow.

I don't know, Paul. What a thought. Clearly you've thought of this.

Maybe we can come back to this at the end. Let's let that percolate.

But the good news is that if you unleash the soldier, not much happens. It's not a high stakes question.

Certainly not very quickly and a lot of it happens in slo-mo.

So much in slo-mo. I believe that this director is the spiritual forebearer of Zack Snyder. I believe that James Glickenhaus walked so that Zack Snyder could run.

Perhaps.

First of all, producer Brad, can you tell us a little bit about when this film opened and how did Paul and I wound up in this tragic dollar theater where we watch this film?

In the dour doldrums of the waning sunset of the summer of 1982.

Paul, I was telling a friend about this podcast, which as of this recording is yet unreleased, or shall we say unleashed, dare I say. I was telling them about the first six, seven weeks of this podcast. Poltergeist, Rocky III, Star Trek II, Blade Runner, TRON, ET, The Road Warrior, The Thing. And then comes this just roll that we're on of Sword and the Sorcerer, Fast Times, Beastmaster, Best Little Horror House in Texas, Night Shift, and now The Soldier. Wow.

It boggles the mind. And again, I'm glad you mentioned this. So dear listeners, you may not have been aware, but as we venture into, I believe, is this episode 18?

I don't know what episode.

Who knows how they're going to end up?

Time has lost all meaning and relevance when you watch The Soldier.

Exactly. We've entered this very strange, a little stage.

I just want to add, I was so confused in the time in this film. I did a spreadsheet to try and figure out if the timing worked.

Oh, you mean the 93-hour countdown for the terrorists? 96-hour countdown for the terrorists to irradiate all the oil fields in Saudi Arabia. Let me just give you the plot first. Oh, yeah. The plot of The Soldier is that-

The dazzling plot.

The dazzling plot. This movie feels like it was made like Paul, my dad spent most of my childhood with his face in a Robert Ludlum novel until Tom Clancy's On Forward October came out and then he spent the rest of my childhood and teenage years with his head buried in a Tom Clancy novel. To me, this feels like if you're a dad and you read a lot of techno thrillers and somebody says, hey, here's five million bucks, make a movie, and you just take the things you like out of all of them and you throw them together in a thing that's basically designed to make you, it's basically like a dad fantasia is what this movie is, isn't it? It is very much a dad fantasia. A group of renegade Russian agents under a false flag operation, commandeer a bunch of plutonium, they make a nuclear weapon out of it, they put it in an oil drum someplace in the Middle East and give the President of the United States 96 hours to either invade Israel and kick them out of the Gaza Strip or for Israel to do it, or they will irradiate 50 percent of the world's oil supply. In response to this, the President of the United States unleashes The Soldier, who in a brilliant gambit uses his own personal nuclear suitcase to bluff slash blackmail the Russian operatives into not irradiating the world's oil supply. The end. That's about it.

With a brief appearance by Klaus Kinski.

So brief. Such a brief appearance. It's funny because the credits of this film literally say special appearance by Klaus Kinski or guest star in Klaus Kinski. He's literally in the movie for 30 seconds. He has two lines of dialogue and then he's gone. Also, Klaus Kinski famously played Dracula in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampire and his codename in this film is Dracca. So the moment I saw the thing I said, Klaus Kinski is Dracula? This is a much better movie than I thought.

Yes. Let's just jump to Klaus Kinski. Well, I think first of all, we need to ring the bell.

Oh, yes. Well, we also need to talk about when this movie came out. You know, this movie literally has thrown us into a liminal space because we literally have lost all sense of time and proportion. Producer Brad, can you tell us about when this movie opened and perhaps why?

We are saying this because you did not want to see the other options available. This was a choice to make things better for yourselves.

You know, Brad, I feel like this is classic gaslighting victim blaming, and I'm going to file a report with HR.

Well, we can pause and go watch Homework starring Judy Collins if you wish.

Wait, wait, you mean Joan Collins?

Sorry, Joan Collins. Yes, that was the movie opening this weekend. Now, here's what's confusing. The box office charts I use, one listed as opening August 27th, which is the weekend we're covering, and one says it's in its third week. So I think it's sort of soft open in one or two theaters before this weekend that we're on.

You know how sometimes they say a movie comes out in a limited release? I feel like this release was not nearly limited enough. I'm saying about this movie, I'm like, damn. Okay, Paul, I've never seen this movie before.

I've never heard of this movie. I had no awareness or knowledge. I don't think anyone does. I've asked friends of mine and they're like, what are you talking about?

Well, it's interesting. So let's go to the bell. Let's go to the bell.

We gotta ring the bell.

Let's ring the bell. We gotta get into this.

Ding, ding.

So I looked at this on Amazon Freebie, which is Amazon Prime Video with commercials, which is good because the commercials were a welcome respite from the film. And injected a necessary touch of action, in fact.

So this was actually one of the most interesting parts of this experience for me. The Soldier is not available for rent or on a traditional subscription streaming service. It is available on three free avod advertising-supported streaming services. So we had the choice of watching it on Freebie, which I believe is owned by Amazon.

That's the Amazon service, yeah.

On Tubi, which is owned by Fox or on Roku, the independent Roku channel. So I found myself in this conundrum. I tend to overthink things every once in a while. And so I was wrestling with, okay, what is the best option of these three to watch the film?

A very modern problem. I get it. I totally get it.

And so I don't presume that you did this. I think you probably, being a more well-adjusted, sane, functional human than I tend to be in such situations, just hit a button and win. But I can't help myself. So I just to share, because sharing is caring.

It is caring.

I don't remember what order I checked them in, but I think I started with Roku and the movie started immediately. And so I hit pause to see how many commercial breaks there were ahead of me, because it shows on the timeline. And there were, I believe, six. And I said, OK, so now I'm going to go. And I went to Freebie. Freebie immediately hit me with an ad, an ad block. And I was just like, go fuck yourself. And I was just out of there. So I abandoned Freebie. I didn't even wait to see how many ad breaks. I just was offended. Then I went to 2B, which has recently rebranded. And I hate their rebranding. I think it's just hideous. They had a perfectly good rebranding. They were a sponsor of the ATX 2D Festival last year. I have a really comfy, nice 2B fleece blanket that I got from-

I got a power bank. Really?

You got a blanket? Yes. Yes. And I got it for you, I believe. I got it because they were giving them out like candy bars and candy bar wrappers.

But now I realize you kept the blanket, Paul.

But anyway, so 2B, I try and I see, oh, it does start the movie immediately, but there are seven ad breaks. Yes. We sent me back to Roku and so I watched it on Roku.

You should have watched it with the one with the most ad breaks, my friend, because honestly, like they were.

Well, I procrastinated, like I sometimes do on things such as this that I'm dreading. And so I wanted to sleep because I had an early morning meeting, Zoom call prior to our recording that I needed to be coherent for.

And because you wanted to sleep, you played the film Soldier.

Yes. And boy, boy, did that do the trick. And I was lulled by the dulcet tones of Tangerine Dream and this sort of apocalyptic-esque Cold War scrapbook main title sequence.

Okay, so let's get into it. So let's get into it. Well, first of all, what I wanted to say about what got us into the whole Tooby Freebie pooflinger wumby thing is, you know, on Amazon, when you watch it on freebie, you get trivia. And one of the trivia items for this movie was-

You missed out on trivia?

Yes, you did. Among them, Ken Wall, who plays the titular character, The Soldier, he's got no name, only worked 12 days this movie, which I think is more than anybody else worked on this movie to be honest with you.

Wow.

Certainly on the script. Paul, can you tell us, Paul, the opening title sequence in this movie does actually promise a much better film. It's actually not awful, is it? Or is it?

No. Although it feels like an opening title sequence from the 70s.

Yes.

Yes. It feels sort of displaced in time, but it's very Cold War, it's early 80s, but it has like a paranoid thriller.

Yeah, it feels like the work in progress version of an opening title sequence from an Alan J. Pakula movie.

Yes. You know, yeah, or a knockoff thereof.

Yeah, you know, but still the work in progress kind of rough. Yes, it needs, but anyway, but then we get this crazy opening sequence crazy, because Sweden, yes, Sweden. There's a Swedish diplomatic limo in a ripoff of the first of every ripoff in this, because this is just cobbled from things your dad liked in other movies with no set rhyme or reason. You're just supposed to understand them intuitively. Here's what I believe. I believe that this film is a beacon sent from people who love Ludlum to other people who love Ludlum. And you just understand the movie intuitively if you've read enough Ludlum, right? Sort of? No, OK, sure. So Sweden is the something of it. Maybe it's the president of Sweden. Maybe it's the prime minister of Sweden. It could be the king of Sweden, right? It's in a limousine. We don't know who. And then like the typical old lady with the carriage comes in with a baby carriage. The limousine accidentally hits the old lady and not the carriage.

I don't think it's accidental. The limo does not even, it just plows straight through.

Sweden is a very ruthless nation in that way.

And this baby carriage, yes. It is shocking.

Shocking. It would be slightly more shocking had I not seen it in the French connection 15 years before. But here's the interesting part. Sweden gets out of the limousine. Again, we don't know who. It could be the president. It could be Mr. Sweden.

Oh, no. They keep going.

Well, no. But don't they get out of the carriage and see what's in the carriage? And that's what triggers.

No, no, no. There are bystanders who converge.

Oh, bystanders.

There are planting bystanders.

Yes.

Who converge. And then it reveals that it's no baby in the carriage. It's an Ingram Mac 10.

Did you go look this up, Paul? Oh, you just knew this. Oh, my God.

I just have geeky knowledge about such things.

You know what, Paul? I respect that.

It is the Ingram Mac 10, which is sort of like a younger cousin to an Uzi.

Yes.

A more affordable. And compact.

Much like this movie is to James Bond. A much more affordable and compact.

Yes. Yes. This is the Ingram Mac 10 to James Bond's Uzi.

Yes, it is.

Not that Bond generally uses an Uzi. But these spectators, horrified bystanders converge. They see, oh, there's a submachine gun in the baby carriage. They all whip out their own submachine guns. And then we get a cut with this perfectly posed.

Oh, my God, Becky. Okay. So it's like literally, literally the Soldier and his four teammates have been standing on the side of a capital-like building. And they're literally posed like an album cover, like an order of short to tallest with the Soldier as the top one, right?

Across the stairs.

And they're already holding their guns out. So like you can only imagine that like literally the Soldier and his team came up, got themselves into album cover position with their guns, and they've been waiting for Sweden to be assassinated.

And let me just postulate, they're holding the exact same prop Ingram Mac 10 submachine guns that the planted bystanders are holding and that they end up shooting each other through the magic of editing. And because surely they didn't have an excess of props in this film.

No, they did not, nor a story or character, by the way.

But they are all in black kind of paramilitary commando gear with black berets, except for Ken Wall, the soldier at the center, who is beretless. He does not need a beret.

No, this man is so masculine. He does not need a beret.

And they mow down these terrorists in slow motion. And then there's this helicopter extraction sequence where a helicopter comes in and they load the bodies that they just mow down and then they also hose down the blood and then they're gone.

No, what is Sweden? Do they just leave Mr. Sweden there to just kind of be like, what the fuck just happened?

We get no explanation of who was in the Swedish diplomatic limo, why this attempt was made, what their reaction to it was. Sweden is never mentioned in the entire movie.

No, Sweden never happens again. But what we know is that the soldier is such a badass that he's either standing in wait with his team in perfect album cover formation knowing beforehand when assassinations are going to take place or that they arrived here so quickly, or maybe they just manifested. Maybe the existence of evil manifested the soldier and his team.

Maybe. They have some power of teleportation. Maybe. I don't know, but it's uncanny.

This might be a much more supernatural movie than we think, Paul.

It might be. It might cross genres.

It might be a supernatural thriller, not just a technical thriller.

The way we didn't anticipate.

Now, audience, I know Paul and I have been talking for like 28 minutes about this opening of the show.

We're only in the opening.

We assure you that there's just not a whole lot more to talk about. They're really, well, they might better know.

It's going to go quickly. Okay, we cut to a KGB training camp.

Oh, yes.

Where everybody speaks perfect English.

Perfect English.

And they are getting a briefing about the soldier.

Yes.

And how he is this threat to communism and a Soviet expansion.

The soldier alone, because the one thing we find out in this movie is that there's actually about only like 32 people in the entire world.

And a bunch of Austrian ski tourists.

Yes. That's the only time, Austria seems to be the only populated nation in this movie. There are no extra, oh, no, and a suspicious country in Western Bar later on.

Oh, yes. Oh, that is a world of wonder.

Because in an R-rated spy movie like this, you need boobs and you need Austria. It's a whole thing. Anyway, yes, because there's mudwesting in this country in Western Bar.

Anyway, so then they deploy some KGB operatives. We cut to a tanker under the cover of night, some operatives disembarking onto a boat, they come to a dock, and then they get into a moving truck.

Paul, one of my criticisms of the Star Wars prequel trilogy is that George Lucas is obsessed with transit. The characters always say to me like, well, we'll take flight 22A out of the Coruscant Spaceport to Naboo. From there, we will make a stop in Dantooine whereupon we will board the 390.

No one cares.

But George shows a lot of ships taking off, a lot of ships flying, a lot of ships coming in. They're pretty, it's fine.

These are not as pretty.

No, this movie, if you literally cut out every sequence of cars arriving where they're supposed to be in this film, this film would be 25 minutes long. Literally 60 minutes of the running time is helicopters flying through the frame, the people get out of the chopper, they get in a car.

Yeah, maybe if you also played all the slow-mo in real time, I think you might be able to get there. Yeah, I think you're right. So insidious KGB operatives have landed on our shores.

On our shores.

And we cut to a plutonium transport convoy leaving a base remarkably defenseless.

Now, the word convoy here is quite generous. I mean, these people make the Larry Hagman convoy carrying the nuclear missile in Superman the Movie look like the Impossible Missions Force. I mean, it's literally like two dudes, a sedan, and then a large truck with a huge cylindrical carrying device. It, by the way, says, Danger Atomic Bomb or some shit, right? Nuclear or something.

It's a case study in poor planning and bad safety protocols.

Needless to say, our Russian operatives attack the convoy, and two things happen.

Well, they don't just attack the convoy, Javi, they attack it with a bazooka.

With a bazooka! Which, by the way, James Glickenhaus clearly has a bazooka fetish. This is our first of several bazooka-foo in the movie.

If you like bazookas, you're in the right place.

Oh, you're gonna love The Soldier, yeah. Look, I would wish The Soldier on somebody who loved bazookas, but whatever. The point being, Paul, for how long do these vehicles explode? Because holy shit, they just keep exploding. It was just one bazooka shell, right?

Yes, they explode in more glorious slow-mo.

Just keep exploding.

This movie seems to be, as we'll discover and become increasingly evident, built around two things. Right. A showcase for explosions. Yes. And a travelogue.

Yes.

And of bazooka explosions.

Yes, specifically bazooka explosions.

And Paul, an exegetic sort of examination of this man's love of slow motion.

Yes, it's slow motion.

It's slow motion.

It is just literally like everything else is kind of filler. It's sort of just to bridge the gap between a highlight reel of those key elements.

So I generally believe that this movie was a boondoggle so that this guy could go to Israel and Austria and Germany. Like he just really wanted to Berlin.

Yeah, he wanted to travel and eat well.

Yeah.

And he thought, you know, I'm going to just use the cover of this movie that he had pre-sold.

Yes.

To just go on vacation.

You know what, Paul, can you imagine, like I'm sure some movie like this was made. Can you imagine, like it's like a movie from the late 90s. Not quite indie, not quite studio. It may be stars like Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi and Matthew Modine.

And maybe Billy Baldwin.

Maybe Billy Baldwin. Yeah. And it's a comedy about Alec Baldwin place a douchebag dad who really wants to go to Austria. And it's easier to sell a fraudulent movie, but then he has to make the movie. That comedy about the making of The Soldier would be more fun to think about than it is to watch The Soldier, I think.

Yes. Yes.

So we were saying.

So we're watching the KGB unleash a bazooka attack, reminder on a nuclear convoy, which seems very ill-advised.

In the immortal words of Sean Connery, some things in the submarine don't respond well to bullets, much less bazookas.

So then they converge, attack the guardians of the plutonium. We find out that this is transporting plutonium.

Now, Paul, as they... Wait, wait, wait. No, now I have to slow you down because...

Oh, by all means.

There's one thing happening in the sequence because there are only 31 people in the world in this film. The same guy who runs the Russian training camp, right?

Yes.

Is also heading this operation, right? He's also a field operative. He also spends approximately 72 minutes of this film's running time standing in front of a telex in what I think is supposed to be Moscow, but looks like an office in a park in Reseda. And he also apparently runs Russian Strategic Air Command, which we find out at the end of the movie. So there's a lot happened. This guy has a lot on his plate.

He's a multifaceted individual, and he has something up his sleeve, which we'll get to momentarily.

You talk about the thing. You go, go, go. I was going to get to that because no, you get to it.

The KGB gingerly approached the flaming wreckage of the convoy, scaled this weird cylinder tank thing with no protective gear, no Geiger counter in sight.

Nothing.

Amid the flaming wreckage, they reach in, they extract a nuclear rod of plutonium of some sort, a cylinder, very casually.

Casually.

But their actions have garnered the attention of the local sheriff, who arrives on the scene.

Oh my god, Becky. Yeah.

Happily ignorant of what he's stepping into.

Let's talk about the 80s for a second. Now, this guy was only slightly more confident than Roscoe P. Coltrane from the Dukes of Hazzard or his deputy Enos.

Just with less personality.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Holy shit. OK. Yeah. Go on.

And so he approached us. I don't think we have this clip, but it's OK. He basically was like, what the fuck is going on here? And our KGB multitasker just is very casually gazing on him with this toothpick in his teeth. And slowly, I believe it's more slo-mo, slow motion, raises his trench coat clad arms, one of which reveals a sawed-off shotgun up his sleeve with a finger like tether trigger fishing line.

Now, Paul.

And he blows the sheriff away.

Clearly, this is supposed to be our James Bond gadget that we're supposed to be blown away by. But it's literally like a regular size sawed-off shotgun. So I don't know how this guy's sleeve is. I mean, this guy has sleeves like some sort of Huguenot-like cordier because he literally, the sleeve is so wide that it fits in right. I mean, it's like a fucking Mossberg.

There's this whole extended sequence after this happens where he dismantles it, reloads it as if we need explanation for what just happened and what was up his sleeve. And we don't care.

Oh, boy, do we not care. We care so little, Paul.

At this moment and others, it feels like there was an impulse, if not necessarily an excess of ambition to make an American James Bond movie. Yes. But on the cheap and on a budget and schedule that did not afford that possibility.

Not to mention, and we'll get to this in a second, it's a movie about an American James Bond. Imagine if James Bond was actually fighting against England. Because when we actually break down the plot of this movie, The Soldier spends much of it fucking up the Americans. Yeah.

And is devoid of personality.

He is the man that charm and intellect forgot, certainly.

So then in more slow-mo, the KGB drive off from the flaming wreckage in a secret Alfa Romeo that they have extracted from the back of this moving truck to further foil anyone from tracking them down.

By the way, Secret Alfa Romeo, much better movie than this one.

Oh, yeah. One of my favorite bands.

Now, Paul, we're going to now do The Thing. We always do this podcast, which is that I try to speed us up, and you're going to go back to some plot point. Oh, my God.

Yes.

Oh, the border. I forgot about the border crossing.

Yes. The most inept and porous. Oh, my God. The border. Known to man.

Four men who manifestly look like Eastern European spies in Alpha Romeo get to the Canadian border, and Producer Brad, you're champing at the bit. Please go on.

I was just going to say, growing up in Michigan and driving to Canada every summer, that's what the guards were like.

Really?

They were very nice, and if you answer their questions politely, they waved you in.

The innocent times of 1982.

Producer Brad, you don't look like a Russian spy. I knew you when you were in 1982. You were just a cute boy with curly hair. You know? And it's like these men, literally, KGB lead has like, he's got the most rush, like his hair is like orange.

They could not exude a greater abundance of suspicion if they tried.

No, literally, the foremost-

And that's not even counting the fact that they're driving an Alfa Romeo.

A foreign vehicle. Anyway, the border guards are like, hi, how are you? Are you carrying any weapons or nuclear ordnance in your Alfa Romeo? And head of the KGB is like, no, we are not. We have absolutely no nuclear ordnance in our car whatsoever.

To be fair, they have a fairly serviceable accent. Although they say they're from New York and it is not a New York accent.

It is not. And also, so the Canadian guy says, where are you going? And the guy says, Niagara Falls.

It's unintentionally hilarious. Anyway, moving on, cut to Saudi Oilfield. Yes.

Yes.

Where a bunch of armed men in desert gear.

My note on this part of the movie was turbines.

Yes.

I'm shocked they were able to afford that many turbines, but whatever.

They approached this just kind of random wall stack of multicolored old oil drums.

Like literally Saudi Arabia in this movie is literally like some guy's backyard who had a sandpit for the kids. It was like a bunch of oil drums and a chain link fence. Yeah.

And we're sitting watching as they slowly remove a few oil drums.

Slowly, slowly.

Because they have their own oil drum that they want to add to the pile, to this wall of oil drums. But then they open it before they set it to reveal some kind of gadget prop bomb thing that doesn't look that scary or intimidating or impressive. It looks pretty cheap.

My guess is that the director saw Superman 2. Because honestly, the weird thing is I saw a lot more references to Superman in this than I did to like James Bond movies, but I won't talk about that in a second. That he saw Superman 2 and basically told the prop guy, do you remember Superman 2? The prop guy is like, I saw it, I was drunk. And the guy said, just give me the bomb from the Eiffel Tower sequence of that. It was in an oil drum. And the guy's like, I'll just, it's really like the Doc Brown atomic bomb. It's like he literally took a bunch of pieces from a little pinball machine, put them in an oil drum in a shoe box and gave them to the Arab. In fact, I'm going to guess that these operatives are the actual Libyans from Back to the Future, who are by the way more credible as terrorists than these people.

This is an intriguing if wildly implausible hypothesis that you've inflicted on us.

It's a better movie.

But we cut to who are the people I call. This is the part where I want to, I'm just going to take over now, Paul.

Go for it.

I'm doing this. The group of people that I call the stakes setting Israelis.

Yes.

We're in a meeting somewhere.

The residents of Jerusalem of the Israeli prime minister.

My other note on this part is this is the kind of movie that mistakes chyrons for depth. And I found this out from the credits. One of the many operatives in this meeting is the Israeli undersecretary for agriculture.

A critical position.

Producer Brad is nodding vigorously like he too is.

Who played her?

Who played her? I don't know.

Rebecca Scholl, who was in Wings.

Really?

Yeah. Deep undercover.

I recognize her right away.

The older woman who ran the concession stand. Yes, that's her. Okay, there you go. Same person. There we go. Deep undercover. Again, a much better movie where the woman in a small regional airport in Maine is secretly the Israeli Undersecretary of Agriculture.

Makes a lot of sense from a strategic surveillance standpoint.

The best thing in this sequence, well, there's two things. One of them is it introduces the Robo-Babe Israeli Mossad agent.

Head of covert operations for the Mossad.

Sure. She's actually quite attractive. But the funny thing is, so this is the stakesetting Israelis talk about, and they seem to be huddled around a Commodore pet computer.

Oh, yes.

By the way, suspiciously like the antique one, James T. Kirkhouse is in this apartment in San Francisco and Star Trek II.

I wanted it to speak. I want it to be like a top secret, Commodore Israeli Commodore AI.

It's like, we will have all of the oil fields irradiated. Yeah.

That was their Mossad super computer.

Now, dear listener, you may be saying they're 40 minutes into the podcast and The Soldier does not seem to have appeared in this movie. Well, guess what? At this point, I checked, we're almost 22 minutes into the movie and the only time we've seen The Soldier is in that album cover, front credits of Law and Order, we're all standing on the capital steps with our guns waiting to shoot Sweden. That's the only time we've seen The Soldier yet and we're like 22 minutes into the movie, right?

Yes. But we finally get the plot.

A bomb has been stolen, they're going to blow it next to this chain link fence and by doing so, they're going to irradiate 50% of the oil supply in the world.

Yes. The threat has been made from an unknown party that a nuclear bomb has been set in the Saudi oil fields and if Israel does not withdraw its West Bank settlements, it will detonate and destroy half the oil supply which would, as the Israeli Council observes, would cripple the US and benefit Russia. And help advance the spread of Communists.

Now, here's the thing, Paul, when you're a screenwriter and both you and I have written some things for the screen, I believe, here and there you and I put some words down on paper. You never want the audience to be ahead of the main character, right? Now, when you have a scene where the bad guys are convening in what the Chiron tells us is a KGB training camp, right? And then you see them conduct the operation and then you cut to the stakesetting Israelis who say, hey, if this happens, Russia will benefit and communism will spread.

So who could be doing this?

Yes, but the movie, supposedly, the United States government, and we will find out in a number of very tedious scenes following this, have no idea who's doing this, right? And they only have 96 hours to find out because that's when the bugs in the book.

It's inexplicable. I mean, what a just impenetrable history this poses to all of the top Intel agencies in the world.

By the way, which are manned by exactly two people, because the president of the United States talks to exactly 10 people in this movie. Nine of them are in one room and then he's got two aides that he speaks to. And they're never in the same room at the same time, these two aides. I think they're played by the same dude in Mission Impossible Masks. So anyway.

Well, we get a pseudo Mission Impossible Mask in the next scene.

Okay. So anyway, classic screenwriting error. Don't let the audience know who the bad guys are before you've even given James Bond the assignment to figure out who they are.

Yeah, seems like a problem.

101.

Then we find ourselves, because they're trying to find out who's behind this. And so we cut to the depths of the Mossad headquarters.

It is the depths.

As they're trying to get information out of a prisoner, and they bring in another prisoner, chain him up on a wall, and threaten to shoot him, and then do shoot him in his bizarrely bulbous form.

It's weird, because they bring him in, and he looks like a normal human being. Not really.

Except for his head.

Looks like a strangely costumed quasi-Middle Eastern. But the thing is, he seems to have the head of a-

He looks like the Geico caveman.

Yes. He looks like a Cro-Mag. That's exactly right.

Yeah. He's got a bad wig, and this weird bulbous, obviously prosthetic form.

And you're wondering, because we don't actually, I don't really understand this. There's one terrorist who's been captured, and he has information about who's doing this or who's whatever. So they bring in his partner.

Or somebody he knows.

Somebody, yeah. Somebody, you know they work together because they're both costumed as vaguely Middle Eastern villains, especially the guy with the weirdly bulbous forehead. I don't even know what her name is. I'm just going to go with Rebecca. She looks like a Rebecca to me, the woman with the curly red hair who's a Mossad badass, right?

I'm now picturing Kirstie Alley and Cheers.

Rebecca, yes.

Working for the Mossad.

By the way, a better movie than this. Now Rebecca- Susan. I'm going to call her Rebecca. Yeah, Rebecca shoots bad guy number two in the head. What we realize is that his strangely bulbous, chromaggedin forehead is- now obviously, the vaguely Middle Eastern bad guy is traumatized, having seen his partner shot in the same scene, in the same room and gives up all the information. Then we go behind the one-way mirror. Rebecca takes the corpse back there. The corpse removes his bulbous, chromaggedin head to reveal what-

That he's a double agent.

For whom and of what? Because I don't know what the scene gave us, Paul. I have no idea.

No, it seems pointless. It seems utterly pointless. Because yeah, first you're like, oh, the prosthetic is clearly a production tool for them to have a squib and to show him being shot in the head. You think it's just that, it's just sloppily done. But no, they had to add this other layer that, oh no, it's a ruse and the Israelis have this technology of fake foreheads that explode.

Within your Mission Impossible mask, which then reveals that you're really the double agent.

Yeah. But even though it just looks ridiculous, it's just anyway.

What I thought watching this, as producer Brad so gamely put it, that this guy looks like one of the Geico cavemen, is that in fact, there is an entire subculture, and I don't think it's a Middle Eastern one. I think that the last patch of Chromags survived and are running covert operations for anyway. Again, a much better movie than this one.

A movie I would stand in line for.

Agent 00 Chromag, in fact.

Yes. Then we cut to one of the most dizzyingly alarming Washington DC briefing scenes ever committed to film.

And it's alarming because no one seems to ever be. It's so casual, isn't it?

It's very casual. It's populated exclusively by white men in suits in dimly lit conference room, where the president is briefed on the situation. And without any hesitation. Oh, no.

But the best thing about that, by the way, the best thing about this is that big shot of the White House, right? Huge establishing shot of the White House. And then the chyron says, yes, Washington, DC. And I'm like, no shit, Sherlock. Like, really?

You know, for our international viewers who may or may not know, who knows? Yes. Yes. Don't want to take anything for granted.

We do not.

In our American centuries.

You know, Paul, thank you for schooling me on my xenophobia, because I feel like you've just you've turned this horrible film into a teachable moment. You're absolutely perhaps some of the foreign viewers of this film may not have known that landmark for what it is.

This film is sort of one big teachable moment in ways surely never.

Okay, do go on. Bunch of white guys with the president speaking. It's like they handed out Salmonex before this briefing. They're all so subnambulant.

Yes. And then so afterwards, then the president pow wows with the chief of the CIA in the stairwell or whatever lobby.

It looks like the director's mom's condo, you know, but it's very sort of baroque, but very cheaply. It's literally where your grandmother lived. If she owned a condo.

Yeah, and it's one set up like there's very economical.

Oh, there's no coverage in this film because the director had to go.

No, no, no, it's it's run and gun grab single set up and move on.

It's grab a single set up and let's go skiing or let's go eat in Berlin or let's go to the bar in the Reichstag. I don't know what these people were doing.

And so what presented with this situation like that's just as a thought exercise. Imagine it's 1982 and this threat has been going on for a long time and you have 96 hours. You have 96 hours. Yes, there's a ticking clock.

Sort of. By the way, I know 48 hours is two days, 76 hours is three days. What the fuck is 96 hours? It's like five and a half days, three and a four. Producer Brad, how long is 96 hours? You're a resident man of intellect.

Four days.

Four days. Okay. Even within the clock setting of spy thrillers, 96 hours is a no-fly. I've never heard anything. It's usually you have three days, 76 hours. You've got two days, 48 hours. You've got 24 hours. But we got 96. Now, Paul, what happens in the scene with the president and his closest advisor, of which he only has three apparently? Do go on.

Our president decides to order his intelligence and military to plan an attack on Israel to drive them out of the West Bank in order to protect the oil supply, to capitulate to the terrorist threat by attacking our ally Israel.

By the way, the funniest thing in this movie is the idea that any president briefing was so completely like not, I mean, the United States has been pro-Israel forever. But it's amazing to me that they're literally sitting there going, well, I guess we're just going to have to nuke Israel. Bob, get a plan ready to nuke Israel just in case.

I don't think they plan to nuke them, but they do plan a strike, an air strike. It's not necessarily, yeah, I don't think they go there. That's to come from someone else.

But by the way, and they never have a, it's like, put a plan in place to attack Israel, but they don't say in case what. It's not like, let's unleash the soldier.

There's no discussion or conversation about the ramifications of such a drastic act, of the world changing implications, or even just the basic posture of since when does America negotiate with unknown, unnamed terrorists and concede to their demand without any attempt to verify the threat. None of this at all. It's just immediately, oh, we should just plan an airstrike on Israel and get them out of the Gaza Strip. I will say again, out of respect and consideration for our current situation while we're taping, we don't mean to make light of the situation in any way, shape or form. All we hope for is peace and an end to the violence and death and atrocities that are occurring and for decent people of all faiths to be able to live in peace and dignity.

Yeah, we're here to make fun of a cheesy movie. We're not here to comment on the situation and anything because this is the plot of the movie. We do have to stop and say this, Paul, everything you say is exactly right. We're here to make fun of a movie. We're not here to make light of the world.

But it is striking the contrast, not just with the reality of 1982 of when this movie came out, but certainly of present day that this is such a wildly implausible Cold War fantasy venture into insanity.

Look, Tom Clancy famously was an insurance salesman who did a bunch of research, research so good that the CIA apparently questioned him, right? This is a movie written by the other guy in the insurance company who didn't do the research. You know, yeah, because it is literally so ignorant of American foreign policy. So Paul, because the president didn't bother to actually assign anybody to look into this before planning to attack Israel, this is a job for the CIA realizes this is a job for the soldier that we're a half an hour who, by the way, only reports directly to the CIA and only the CIA chief has contact.

Only the CIA now seems like that might come to bite somebody on the ass at some point. But we'll see there.

They have a lot of confidence in the soldier to like do the right thing. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So we finally meet reunited with the soldier on screen.

Sweet reunion with the soldier. Please do go on, sweet, sweet soldier.

Who is very fervently engaged in high-tech simulator.

Oh, my God. The simulator training makes the training in Megaforce look like literally what Mark Zuckerberg has in his home. Okay. It's like he's got like a 16-millimeter projector from your high school. Right. Paul, I can't even. I'm like, I've entered a fugue state. You described this.

In a visionary precursor to the AR wall, we have some kind of rear projection setup. Yes. I think the opening is a Times Square-esque scene of a armed gunman, who of course is a black man because this is a 1982 movie, who is then shot and then there's a little red dot indicator overlaid on the screen.

It is high tech, my friend.

It's a reveal that this is not reality. This is a simulation. And then we cut to another scene of a kidnapping, an armed kidnapper, and then Ken Wall shoots him in the head. Shockingly not.

That's a movie credit card.

Progress over the course, the iterations of the simulation.

Within 10 seconds, the AI realized, oh shit, I'm being racist. Let's throw in a white guy.

But The Soldier's meditative training lifestyle, which seems to be, this is his leisure activity on his off time. He's dressed very casually.

He's like that Chuck Norris joke, Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he waits. So that's what The Soldier, he just sits there shooting simulated black people until the call comes.

Until the call comes, and the call comes from the CIA chief. Ken Wall seems to exhibit a sophistication of thinking that escapes all of his superiors, because he immediately postulates, as big of a leap of logic that this may be, that I think the Russians might be behind this threat.

The president and all his people, or at least know who he is. Totally. The president and all his people, literally, they have no idea. They're just going to go ahead and invade Israel, because fuck it. But The Soldier is already like, oh yeah, clearly Russian shadow operation. Let's get going.

Yes. And so not only does he think the Russians are either behind it or know who are, he says, I want to go talk to them. And like, oh yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable plan. Let's send our top agent to go talk to the Russians.

The Soldier has the ability, by merely being seen, what we find out is he can attract Russians magnetically.

Yes. And presumably has spent considerable time and energy investing in international relations.

Now, the other thing that the head of the CIA tells the Soldier here is that there's an F-15, F-15, I think, 16, F-13, whatever it takes. Just hanging out, just go get the F-15, fly to Switzerland or to Austria to talk.

I don't think there's any such thing as an F-15.

Well, I think for this movie, I think it was an F-13.

There may be, maybe in this universe.

You know what? In this movie, we deserve an F-16, but we got an F-13, okay? So, so the Soldier, like, yeah, of course, you never see the play and you cut to, you know, he's in Austria. Oh, no, you don't, because what we don't know, what we don't know, what the Soldier doesn't know is that even though he's the biggest badass in the universe, he's actually being bugged.

Neither he nor the head of the CIA know that their conversation in the CIA Chiefs Office is being monitored by some unknown person in some unknown back room workshop where he's, like, working as an electronics hobbyist. And it turns out that this spy is played by...

Jelko Ivanov.

The very talented Jelko Ivanov.

Yes, indeed. You saw that too, very good.

Who is a fantastic character actor.

He's so good.

He's been in many, many, many things. Homicide, I believe, in 24, just on and on and on.

By the way.

So many things. You know him when you see him.

He was in that TV show, Damages, with Glenn Close, where he delivers my favorite line ever, which is that somebody asks how he is and he says, any day above ground is a pyrrhic victory. And he nails it. And by the way, Jelko, no lines in this movie, but he fucking nails. And by the way, we spend approximately 59 minutes watching Jelko Ivanik both listen to this conversation and then make a bomb out of a light bulb, an incendiary device out of a light bulb. And he's actually funny because we've just spent watching our lead figure out the plot before everybody does, and be cool shooting minorities and stuff like that. But Jelko Ivanik has no dialogue and he's actually a more magnetic screen presence than Ken Wall. And we spent like a good five minutes watching him build this bomb, don't we?

We have this extended scene with no dialogue. That's a little short film character study about this presumably Russian spy in his little hobble, who very meticulously after he finishes overhearing the meeting, the conversation, he crafts a, let's just say, fairly conspicuous looking light bulb bomb.

He literally cuts a light bulb open, fills it with gasoline and other shit that is incendiary. Then he just basically seals up the light bulb. There's a huge bubble in it. You can tell it's full of liquid. Then, now the head of the CIA does not work out of Langley. The head of the CIA does not work out of the Pentagon or out of, the head of the CIA works out of literally a cheap detective office with that marble glass window where much like James Bond's shadow company is Universal Exports. This has some name like T&M exports or some shit like that. The guy dressed up like a cleaning woman.

Very unconvincingly. Dressed as a cleaning woman. Is he even wearing boobs?

I mean, he's just literally Jelkova, Anakin, a wig and a dress.

It's a git, unintentionally comical. I can only guess. But yeah, but seemingly has acquired access to the CIA chief's office.

I mean, look, in his defense, he is a master of disguise.

Well, if nothing else, if you want to venture into this movie, do it to see Zelko Ivanec dressed as a cleaning woman. Yeah. So he plants, he installs the light bulb into the desk lamp of the CIA chief, which again, this is the classic Hitchcock bomb under the table. But now it's just the light bulb in the desk lamp. Now we cut to one of our-

But here's the interesting thing. We don't know, is he a Russian spy?

No. There's no explanation.

You never explained who he is.

Nothing. Never explained. We just have to kind of surmise and connect the dots.

Now, but the thing is, we've been watching this because that's how long it takes an F-13 to get to Austria. And it's played in real time, apparently.

More or less. And then finally, we are treated to one of the glorious travelogue episodes of the film, in beautiful, sunny St. Anton, Austria, the Ski Resort.

Now, Paul, this is a moment when I know that this podcast, it's known for its brevity and tightness. But this is a moment when I fear I must digress because producer Brad and I had a friend in high school named Chris French. And producer Brad and I used to do practical jokes on each other and on our friends, you know, and the practical joke that I never never could have never never did such a thing.

Now, don't even don't even have a dozen of them at the forefront of my mind right now.

Now, producer Brad and I now Chris French drove a notoriously small and rickety vehicle, a notoriously small and rickety economy.

Was it an Alfa Romeo?

No, it was not. It was a Ford Fiesta, like the one driven by The Soldier. Now, Roger Moore pulls up to St. Moritz in For Your Eyes Only or Gstaad or Sumsky Resort, and he's in a Lotus Esprit. Okay? I mean, and it's beautiful. Now, The Soldier, because he is a master of disguise and stealth, obviously, pulls up to this resort in his Ford Fiesta, which I will give it, it does have a racing stripe, so that's good. But the reason I bring up Chris French and his Ford Fiesta is that we made so much fun of the size of this Ford Fiesta in high school that as a prank, we took Chris to a movie, and while we were in the movie, and that movie was Lucas, by the way, starring the great Corey Haim and Winona Ryder in one of her first roles.

Yes, I was going to say.

We filled his car with popcorn, like literally from bottom to top, all the way up to the nada sunroof, and obviously, then Chris came outside his car, and it was our way of highlighting the mockery of the size of his car. So the moment that The Soldier pulls up in his Ford Fiesta to say, where is it? St. What? It's not St. Moritz, where is it?

St. Anton.

St. Anton, because even on this budget, they couldn't afford St. Moritz. He doesn't afford Fiesta, and the first thing I thought was, I have filled that car up with popcorn. That's not a glamorous spy vehicle. I expected popcorn to come out of the car when he walked out.

If only. So we were like, what are we doing in Austria at the ski resort? And then we behold the most glorious vision that this film has in its arsenal. And it is finally the advertised antagonist, Klaus Kinski, as a ski bunny.

Oh my God.

Dressed head to toe in pristine white.

And how tight are his pants, by the way? I mean, those are-

They're so tight, they will give you a German accent.

Yeah.

I can't top that. This sequence is obviously a ripoff of the teaser for The Spy Who Loved Me, and one of the action sequences in For Your Eyes Only. And what's interesting is so, Draka and The Soldier get into a funicular, like a cable car, and they literally eye fuck each other in real time, for the amount of time it takes for this funicular to go from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain. And it's literally just them eye fucking each other. Like, by the way, eye fuck, a very technical term used by TV writers of the 90s to describe people looking at each other with great passion.

Thank you for extrapolating that footnote. But there is no sense of buildup, of crescendo, of suspense, of tension. Like much of this film, it puts these things on the table. It doesn't know what to do with them, how to craft them in a way that the films they're stolen from did so adorably.

Exactly. It's literally like, hey, I saw For Your Eyes Only, and James Bond gets in a funicular with whoever the guy is he's meeting, and they look at each other suspiciously. Let's do that.

I think it was Charles Dance. What? I think the actor who gets in with Roger Moore is Charles Dance. I'm digressing.

No, no. I think you're thinking of John Glover, who plays Christados, who was also at General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back, and was also the villain in The Last Crusade. But I don't think that's the guy who gets it. I don't even know Brad. See, this is what happens when I get exasperated. I forget that he is producer Brad, not Brad. When we're at this podcast, he's my boss, he's producer Brad, not my friend Brad. Okay. Anyway, but that is the hold that The Soldier has on me.

Charles Dance was in For Your Eyes Only. Really?

Who did he play? No, I'm kidding. Who did he play?

I believe he plays one of the goons who chases them on the ski slope.

Wow. Okay, there we go. Producer Brad, I apologize to you. Also, John Glover does not get in the funicular with him in For Your Eyes Only, but he is the villain. Anyway. Producer Brad, I'm sorry I doubted your knowledge of James Bond films. Another digression, producer Brad is literally the Travis Bickle of James Bond. Well, without shooting people. Producer Brad is a huge fan of James Bond. We were big fans of James Bond as kids. We go to James Bond marathons as kids. But also, producer Brad, you know what this movie reminded me of? Do you remember when you and I played the James Bond role-playing game when we were in high school and our agents were all the coolest agents ever and they had their own islands? They were just super fucking cool. And to this day, I remember the name of your secret agent, producer Brad, by the way. But I will not release that information without your consent because it is highly secretive, highly classified.

I see no reason at this point not to share it.

I don't remember my agent's name, but Brad's agent was agent Floyd Dolby. Much like my agent, he had his own island and he was just the super coolest dude ever.

But to bring it back, can I just point out that this film illustrates and just the appearance of Klaus Kinski in this moment and all that that pretends and promises lights a candle of revelation of how profoundly we were robbed of never getting Klaus Kinski as a Bond villain.

Now, there's a reason why we never got Klaus Kinski as a Bond villain, by the way, and I hate-

Because he's insane.

I suggest that anybody listening to this podcast still go and read a book called Every Man for Himself and God Against All. It is the memoir of Werner Herzog, in which he spends a voluminous amount of time discussing what a crazy person. I'm shocked Klaus Kinski was allowed to live, much less be in films. This guy was like, this guy was a violent, crazy...

Yeah, if you don't have the patience to read that, watch My Best Fiend, which is an amazing documentary about their relationship.

What a crazy person Klaus Kinski is.

Yes, and how close they came to murdering each other.

This guy is literally like he shot people, he destroyed buildings in one of his movies. He's accused of actually like sexually assaulting multiple cast members. This guy was like not just a nut, a real life villain. And a horrible human being.

Absolutely.

But somehow he's an actor and he's in this film. And literally you can tell that this man had a gambling debt or he needed to pay his drug dealer. And he accepted literally eight hours of work in this movie. They probably paid him in cash. This is the only scene he's in the movie in.

We don't know watching this movie, is this is all we're going to get about Kinski. It is one sequence. You can basically break it down into generously three or four scenes. There's the scene where they meet at the base at the ski resort.

And stare at each other suspiciously.

Again, no dialogue. Then when they are in the gondola and ride it with other passengers up to the top of the mountain. Again, no dialogue.

Which by the way, if you had scored that with some 80s romance saxophone, it would have been a love story for the ages. Because they could have been a whole other movie.

Then they disembark. They're the last two to disembark from this crowded gondola. Again, no dialogue. It's very awkward. Then they enter this chamber that houses a more compact.

Yes, they're going to the secondary gondola.

Secondary gondola. Then we get, and I feel we've been remiss and also maybe stingy this episode by not having our usual generosity of clips.

I don't give a shit. I don't even want to do clips.

You are about to be rewarded because here, in its totality, is Klaus Kinski's complete performance in 1982's The Soldier. This exchange between The Soldier and Dacha?

Dacha?

Dacha? Dracula? Whatever.

Dacha.

I don't think it's terrorist, Dacha. I think it's renegade KGB.

What does the rest of the CIA think of this idea of yours?

Well, I haven't told anyone yet. I see.

Hey, hey, what are you doing?

Hey, what the hell is he doing?

Draco, what are you doing?

Jesus Christ.

Okay, now we've seen all of Klaus Kinski's performance, which was one, two, two, generously two.

Two?

And what's interesting about this is, so Draco locks the soldier in the secondary gondola, which is merely made of plastic. Now, American James Bond not only speaks with this New York accent, I don't know where that accent is from, he's like, hey, I think it's the CIA, I don't know.

Hey, what you doing?

What you doing? Right? And the soldier, this badass.

I mean, he would, to be fair. He goes on to play wise guy on CBS in 1988, I believe, for several seasons.

But here's the thing, James Bond can't get out of a fucking plastic skeet resort gondola. Like, he's literally struggling.

Much less gets tricked into going in first and having it locked behind him and propelled up to the. I mean, it's so it's it's like, oh, my God, you are so inept. But it's hilarious.

It's kind of heroically getting out of the gondola while the gondola is going up the mountain. He's going, what you're doing?

What you're doing?

You know, he sounds like he sounds like Colin Farrell as the Penguin and the Batman to me.

And I don't know if you caught this because it's very quiet and under his breath. And I have to presume maybe this was an ad lib. But it is the piece de resistance for me. It is just the grace note on his whole. What the hell are you doing, whatever, blah, blah, that then under his breath, he just says, Jesus Christ. It is the best moment of Ken Wall's performance in the whole film.

You know, Ken Wall only worked 12 days on this movie. So give the guy some slack anyway.

Remarkable. Remarkable. And then we get, then we get the centerpiece stunt action explosion moment of the entire film.

Literally, this is to this film what Tom Cruise leaping off of the helicopter onto the motorcycle was in Fallout or Rogue Nation or Dead Row, whatever the fuck it was. You can tell that Ken Wall did not do his own stunts. Now, an operative who's working for Draka because they're both wearing matching jumpsuits, takes out a bazooka, which now I'm going to guess is the same bazooka from the opening of this movie, considering...

Yes, from Bazooka's RS, because Draka has sent Ken Wall in this gondola... To be killed... .into the field of bazooka target practice for his compatriot who's waiting at the ready. And let's just take a moment to consider this guy's day. So this guy woke up in the morning and he's like, holy shit, I'm going to get to shoot my bazooka at this American asshole in a gondola. This is going to be the greatest moment of my KGB career. I've been training and waiting my whole life for this. I can't fucking wait. And there he is behind the snowbank with his bazooka that he's probably been cradling and whispering to.

Happy thoughts.

And just like, yeah. And then finally the moment comes and Drakka sends the bright yellow gondola. So you can't miss it. And he whips out the bazooka, shoulders it like he has practiced this over and over again. This is his time to shine and shine. He does. While Ken Wall is frantically realizing he is fucked up. He's got a bust out of the gondola. He spies bazooka guy. He's like, I got to jump for my freaking life. And with a moment to spare, fraction of a second leaps out into the sky, off the gondola, heroically breaking the glass.

By the way, with the strength of intellect to take his skis with him.

Yes. Yes. A very important detail that he still has his skis and ski poles. As the bazooka fires and hits dead aim on the gondola, exploding it magnificently. And then we get the most lifeless ski chase ever seen in that action.

Wow. It's kind of amazing. Here's what happens. So the soldier is, this is basically the teaser from The Spy Who Loved Me or the middle chase scene from For Your Eyes Only as directed by Ed Wood. Literally down to having a bunch of Austrian people eating while the ski chase is going on and looking at the skis. I mean, you know, producer Brad, may I prevail on you to play the Tangerine Dream cue again that plays during this entire ski? Because I want the audience to get an idea of just how languid, because what can Tangerine Dream do? Tangerine Dream can't save this. They're good at what they do. I love Tangerine Dream. They can't save this.

No.

This is like casual cruising music. This is not really chase music, but that's because the way this is shot, composed, edited is lifeless. It has no sense of real propulsion or engagement or intensity or suspense. It is so indifferent in its staging. I'm so flummoxed by it because it's such a missed opportunity. They've got this great location. They've got capable stuntmen, but they just don't have a sense of how to execute this until the very end.

Until the very end. When the scene that showed up in all the trailers comes, and The Soldier is being, he's shot one guy already, right?

Yeah. He's taken out one of them. Kind of not that impressive.

Not that impressive.

You know, efficiently.

But then, he gets his hands, he's got a big machine gun under his coat, which he's also kept during this fall.

Yes. One of those trusty Ingram Mac-10, some machine guns that are, you can hide under a ski jacket.

And then, so he literally goes over a divot, right? And he does kind of like a slo-mo, like he turns 180 and slo-mo, while the other guy, so he's in the air. He turns 180.

The other guy's shooting at him.

The other guy's shooting at him. And then he does this 180 degree turn in midair while wearing skis and he fires his Uzi, while the other guy is in midair from the same divot, and he hits him like four times.

Repeatedly.

It's like Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. And like literally this guy's in midair like being riddled with bullets in slow motion.

And then they land, they crash land onto the resort patio.

Because that's what happens in old James Bond movies, yes?

Amid a bunch of tourist onlookers who are horrified. But the KGB pursuer is not dead yet.

Oh no.

And so The Soldier cradles him. Cradles him lovingly. And slash interrogates him very soothingly. And for some reason, the KGB agent just gives up the fact that, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the KGB. You were behind it. KGB is behind it. And it's going to go off. The nuke is going to go off. And then he dies.

And it's not like it's The Soldier putting his hand in the guy's wound and saying, I can make the pain stop if you tell me. Or him saying, I'll get you to a hospital if you want to live, but you got to tell me, it's literally, he's just cradling him and says, hey man, who's behind this? And the other guy sort of looks up at him lovingly and says, well, since I'm going to die anyway. Amazing. Amazing.

I just wow.

Now here's what's happening after this, because this is the only sequence in this film that's crafted with any level of accidental panache. It's at the head of the CIA, right?

He's waiting for a call. He's waiting for news in his office. And it's like 1:30 a.m. Washington time.

But Ken Wall walks into the American Embassy with his submachine gun in Berlin. Somehow, he's taken the F-13 from Austria to Berlin. Now we're in Berlin. He walks into the American Embassy in Berlin in his Ford Fiesta with his ski jacket on and the submachine gun underneath. He goes into the comms room. No one has asked him who he is. No one's interrogated him.

Yeah. Somehow, he's gotten through all security and into the comms room.

Weirdly, takes out his submachine gun and tells the guy in the comms room, call the head of the CIA for me.

Even though they're on the same side.

Yeah, they're on the same side. But he walks in with his gun and they call the head.

He's like, I don't have time to prove who I am. So I'm just going to threaten the guy because I got to call my boss, the CIA chief in DC, who's waiting on the call.

The CIA chief is waiting in the darkness. This is where this film becomes positively Hitchcockian. Comes into his office. He reaches for the light bulb, but then the phone rings. So he doesn't turn on his lamp. Then he talks to the soldier in the dark. He reaches for the lamp again. He doesn't do it. Then the embassy police arrive and they're holding the soldier at gunpoint and the soldier's like, hey man, look, I'm talking to the head of the CIA. Why don't you just pick up the phone and talk to him? Okay? He'll tell you who I am. So then just as he hands the phone, the head of the CIA kind of reaches for his lamp again. And this time in a masterpiece of suspense, just before the embassy guards get to confirm the soldier's identity, which I don't know why he didn't just come in and say, I'm the fucking soldier man.

They should have been briefed.

They should have been briefed. But he turns on the lamp and the incendiary device goes off and he dies right before the soldier can confirm his own identity. So now-

In a horrible conflagration of doom.

Yes. And now the American embassy guards think the soldier is a bad guy. And the soldier jumps out of an embassy window, which is shockingly just glass, because you didn't need embassy security in Berlin.

And clearly not reinforced.

Not in Berlin, that was only surrounded by East Germany and then Russia on the other side, whatever.

Yes. Important to note, dear listeners, this is 1982. This is the Cold War. Berlin is separated by the Berlin Wall into West Berlin and East Berlin. And West Berlin is under the control of NATO. And East Berlin is under the control of the Soviet Union, which was a thing, not Russia, the Soviet Union.

And the entire city smack dab in the middle of East Germany. Now, my dear listeners, dear listeners, you may notice a little bit of a break in our discussion of the scintillating embassy chase at the middle of the film The Soldier. But it's because we had to take a moment to handle some life stuff. And now we're back. But in the time between when we stopped recording and now, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra had a shocking accident and is now recording with two cracked ribs, which means that if we make him laugh, we will only exacerbate his condition. Right, Paul?

So, yes. So we have introduced an unexpected additional level of danger and suspense into our podcast proceedings. I sort of embarked unexpectedly on my own little action sequence.

Are you not as rigorously well-trained as The Soldier, Paul? Is that what you're saying?

Apparently, I am not. And I thought I was.

So here's the twist. The twist is that this actually happened three weeks ago. So during the recording of the first segment of James Glickenhaus' The Soldier, you were in fact in excruciating pain and soldiering on for the sake of our audience, Paul. That's the hit you took for your country.

Such is my devotion to Multiplex Overthruster. That pain is not an obstacle. It is not even to be acknowledged.

When it comes to The Soldier, the pain is all on the screen, isn't it?

The mission is what matters.

But here's the part that adds yet another layer of suspense, which is that if we make you laugh during this podcast, your pain will only increase. So it really becomes a question of how much are you willing to sacrifice for the entertainment of our audience?

This is an existential dilemma that we're now all swimming in the same pool of.

Now, when we last saw The Soldier, he was running away from the American Embassy. He had literally just jumped out of the American Embassy.

Yes, out of a very flimsy window, and is now racing through the streets of East Berlin on location. This was actually made apparently on location in East Berlin, which I find wildly mystifying, but an important detail, an important detail of how he is racing through East Berlin.

Oh my God, do we have the same important detail?

I believe we do.

Oh my God, we're like both competing to get this important detail.

I defer to you.

Well, it's neither of our important details. It's producer Brad's important detail. Producer Brad, hit it.

We last left him in Austria in the Fiesta. He's now in West Berlin. So in theory, he drove across East Germany in this Fiesta.

Well, producer Brad, I think the thing that you don't know, which I happen to know about The Soldier, is that his F-13 has a forged Fiesta-sized compartment in it, that he used to fly the Fiesta over East Germany. You may remember the F-13 is the jet plane he took across the Atlantic, so he could go to say something.

Yes, that does not exist.

Because you wouldn't use the F-13 designation on a regular fighter. Most fighters would be afraid of it, but most fighters would be afraid of it. It's an unlucky number, but the soldier is afraid of it. Yeah, it's not secret.

I also think maybe it's possible, maybe this is the pain medication I'm on speaking, so apologies. But perhaps this is a clandestine crossover with Firefox. And the Ford Fiesta has a stealth mode that was used to traverse the expanse of East Germany, but then the power was drained by the time it got, just in time, by the time it got to East Berlin, or West Berlin.

I think that the MIG-31 that Mitchell Gantz stole from the Soviets is in fact a transformer, and it became the Ford Fiesta. Oh, yes. All right, yes.

By the way, what I wouldn't give to see Ken Wall attempt to use the neural interface from Firefox.

Hey, you're going to go ahead and shoot those missiles over there. You're going to go ahead and shoot those missiles over there.

To drive the Ford Fiesta.

Hey, make 31, transform into a Fiesta, will ya? Like that?

Careful, Paul's laughing.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Down, down, down.

So now, all I have in my notes is Berlin car chase. Is there anything in this car chase that's of even remote interest? Because the next note I have is President in bathrobe.

Okay, there's slightly more between that. This is quite a chase and quite a chase to be shot on location in West Berlin in 1982. Our fearless hero crashes the Ford Fiesta into the Israeli consulate in search of asylum.

Yes.

The Israelis emerge armed.

Because the soldier is too proud. He's too proud to show his credentials when he enters the embassy of the nation to which he's a secret spy.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. This all could have been avoided by common sense. But anyway, he can't be bothered. He is a man of action, not a man of words. But so he crashes in with the Americans in hot pursuit. They then encroach onto Israeli embassy soil, which is legally Israeli soil.

It is in fact an act of war, right?

Well, it is an incursion that the Israelis manning the embassy do not take kindly to, and they threaten to shoot the Americans if they don't leave in their attempt to capture the soldier. It turns out that the head military honcho there at the embassy recognizes the soldier because they have a history.

It's funny because like James Bond, for example, and the soldier and really all spies, it's interesting because everybody knows who they are. So like it's funny because like I've just shocked James Bond doesn't walk into any restaurant in Europe and people don't go norm, you know, same with the soldier. Anyway, so the soldier walks into an embassy. So the soldier and two Jews walk into an embassy. Wait a minute.

Sorry. It's a different movie.

Never mind.

Then we do get the president in the bathroom as he is told that in a, let's say in a startling lack of foresight in the intelligence planning, that no one knows how to contact the soldier. So that's a dilemma in terms of how to deal with or contact the soldier.

The president is in his bathrobe and he's being told by an aide that not only can they not find or contact the soldier, they also don't know how to contact the head of the CIA. Yes. Yes.

Because he has just been murdered.

Well, he has been murdered. But here's the thing. Isn't there a fucking line of succession for the CIA?

You would think so.

Like if you can't get to the number one guy, maybe you call the number two guy and say you've seen the number one guy.

Yeah. And there should be a packet of stuff that's handed over. Like, yeah, this is a packet.

Paul, don't they have a building? There should be a fucking building that they can.

Yes.

Where's the worst? Okay. Anyway, a lot of questions.

We cut back to the embassy. Our fetching head of Mossad covert operations arrives, tells the soldier the CIA chief is dead and that the Americans think that he has killed him. Yes. Now, they are forced to have to trust each other and work together. This then apparently incites the soldier to need a nap.

But also, you know what? No, no, no. Paul, your narrative is so scintillating. You're making this film come to life for me. Please continue.

I'm curious to know what I missed, but what you were going to digress to.

No, no, it's not you missed it. So now, the soldier has to take this nap, and then suddenly this film becomes a Pink Panther movie. Now, if you're under 50 and are listening to this podcast, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. But there was a series of movies called The Pink Panther. They were about the adventures of Inspector Clouseau, who was played by Peter Sellers, the stupidest inspector in all of the gendarmerie.

Not the Steve Martin version for younger people.

No, for people under 40. So anyway, Paul, you may recall that Peter Sellers' character, Inspector Clouseau, had a sidekick named Cato. Yes. Who was a broad caricature, a broad orientalist caricature. And that Cato and Inspector Clouseau had a deal where Inspector Clouseau would keep up his Kung Fu chops by being ambushed randomly by Cato in an opportune situation. Right? And that was a plot of great mirth in the Pink Panther comedies. Right?

Absolutely. I was obsessed with this as a kid.

Okay. So when you saw this, so just to say the soldier is taking a nap, like you do, in the middle of a 96-hour global crisis.

Yes.

A ninja shows up, right? Yes. In the Israeli embassy, tries to garret him.

Yes.

Masked ninja.

A masked ninja, yes, tries to garret him.

Yes.

They have what can charitably and generously be referred to as a Kung Fu fight, I think.

Very broadly speaking. Very broadly, yes. If you squid, it could be characterized as a, yes, sort of.

Until the ninja, in the middle of all of this, lifts his sword to kill the soldier, but the sword gets impaled on a bookshelf. It is during this moment that the soldier and the ninja drop their act, and you realize that this is done other than the soldier's favorite funny black friend because it's not enough to do an orientalist caricature of ninjas. It's also got to be the funny black friend. What you learn is that like Kato and Clouseau, apparently, in moments of great crisis, the soldier has made a deal with his funny black friend that he's to dress up like a ninja and attack him to keep up their cut. What? Yes. Paul, what is happening?

You got to stay sharp, man. I mean, that's just how you stay sharp. That's just how bad ass this team is.

I literally expected the soldier to go, Kato.

Yeah. Maybe it is intentionally funny. I find this whole scene hilarious because it feels like it becomes a different movie for this one scene. Then the next, it gets even wilder.

No, no. Excuse me, Paul. For the next four scenes, it becomes an even greater because once you realize that this is the soldier's own bargain basement version of Kato, who is not only an orientalist parody, but also a stereotypical black character. Because that's what the soldier is. It's concentrated narrative, Paul. The soldier really is just, it's like a sapphire bullet of pure cliche right into your brain, you know?

And so in this scene, it is then revealed that even though the suddenly, all the entire US government military intelligence establishment has jumped to the conclusion that the soldier has gone rogue and is involved in assassinating the CIA chief.

And by the way, the entire military industrial complex is trying to find out the CIA chief or his successor right now, or somebody in the CIA, who can help them with this issue.

Exactly, exactly.

They're really on the ball. The soldier's own team, of course, are loyal to him, and they know this can't be true. And so this is the first of them to show up. What's frustrating and confounding is that none of them have credited character names. At one point, I believe our black ninja friend is referred to as Tribus or something. But I'm not sure, and it's not in the credits or anything, so I don't, but I'm just going to call him Tribus.

Tribus?

He's played by Steve James, is the actor, and he's having fun.

He's called Tribus because in his youth, he was run over, hit by, and then flew on top of three different buses. Hence the name Tribus.

Yes. He defeated three buses. Okay.

Paul, now it's a 93-hour global crisis. Right. Where in East Berlin, Tribus has flown his own F-13 to East Berlin only to ambush the soldier.

Right. It somehow evaded detection to penetrate the security of the Israeli embassy. So now it's decided that, oh, we need to assemble the team. Yeah. We got to deal with this because shit's going down and there's going to be a nuclear shock. So now we have to do a montage.

Oh, God.

Assembling the team. Before we get to this.

By the way, we're well into the second act of this movie. I hope, I hope. We're literally now, the movie has gone from being a Bond flick to being like an Ocean's Eleven, Guns of Navarone, Dirty Dozen movie where they have to recruit the soldiers dirty half dozen, right?

Yeah. But this also steps into one of the film's biggest failings and missed opportunities.

Which is?

We have the parallel with say, Megaforce, where we have this fearless, flawless leader that has this devoted team of loyal, paramilitary specialists, badasses, who are all, have their own things going on. But no effort is made to define them as individual characters.

Oh, God no, God no, no, no, no, no.

Or to do stuff that, you know, kind of is in the legacy of the Doc Savage team and then would later be done so beautifully in Bucker Banzai in Two Years From Now. They are just generic, like, nameless.

In fact, in the opening credits, they are credited as the Soldier's team. And all five names appear underneath, like, fuck it.

Yes. Names?

We don't have the budget for names. We got Kinski to do a day of shooting. We can't have names.

But to recruit the first or rather second member of the team, because now somehow Tribus has magically teleported back to the States, presumably. And at first, this is very disorienting, because I'm like, is this bar in East, in West Berlin? No.

Can I just say one of the biggest complaints about this movie is the timeline. Yeah, because there is no countdown timer on screen. It only shows the time of the location they're in. So you lose all sense of time. So like I said earlier, I did a spreadsheet, and I think whether in Berlin, there's 56 hours left.

Now, producer Brad, I think we have missed the most important part of that sentence, which is, quote, I did the spreadsheet. So producer Brad, you literally took a spreadsheet and calculated the 93 hours, and what happened when?

I did, but I had to convert versus Greenwich Mean Time, because, you know, everything-

Yeah, they're all in different time zones, yeah.

I will admit, I did not go to see if there's daylight savings time at any of these locations, so maybe off by an hour.

God help us.

Producer Brad, you are the Steve Rogers of my life, and I appreciate you enormously. But also, you're now also the Doc Emmett Brown of my life, because do you remember when Doc Emmett Brown is showing Marty McFly the model of the city, and he goes, Marty, here's my model of the city. I'm sorry I didn't have time to send it down and paint it. We just literally lived that beat with you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, sir.

Okay. So next, we get perhaps the most exotic look out of our globetrotting spy adventure. As we enter a raucous Western cowboy bar, featuring a mechanical bull and mud wrestling and live music performed by none other than George Strait. George Strait, right? Yes.

What the f- Okay, I want to read you my notes from this, okay? Paul, I'm going to just forgive me. You're going to take me back anyway. Obviously, Tribus goes in. He's a black man in a country and Western bar with mud wrestling, George Strait on a mechanical bull. There's an altercation that's reminiscent of Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours.

We have a clip of arguably the best line of the film that he does get at the end of this. Because he's retrieving one of the soldiers team who of course is drunk in this bar.

He goes in to recruit the white guy. He gets, obviously, there's racism. He gets in a fight with a bunch of rednecks. They all fight. He gets his white friend to the car who's drunk.

This is before they exit the bar.

Okay. And it turns out Tribus has an oxygen tank in the car ready for you. Because here's my summation of the seed in my notes. Paula says mud wrestling, boobies, Western bar, racism, Kung Fu black man, oxygen in car, the fuck.

That only needed Stefan's SNL narration about this.

Oxygen in car, the fuck.

Welcome to New York's hottest club.

Tell us what the best quote is from the movie right now. Well, I didn't even think there were quotes from this movie, but that's the best one.

They are few and far between.

They really are. What's supposed to dialogue?

This is as close as the film ventures to insightful and timely racial commentary.

Oh my God, Becky.

As tribus, if that's what we're calling him, and I hope that is no means of disparagement, Steve James as he's confronted by one of the racists who starts this clip deploying the milder epitaph than the one that is deployed initially in the film, which we will omit, but recognize the existence of in the film.

Producer Brad, regale us with this alleged clip of dialogue.

Come on, Spade. You need to be messing with somebody a little bit bigger. You got two choices, asshole.

Duck or bleed? You got two choices, asshole.

Duck or bleed? I'm going to say that just in the writers' room now. I'm just going to follow.

I think that needs to be on shirts. I think this is a missed merchandising opportunity.

Yeah. I want to crochet that on a throw pillow, my friend.

Yeah. But I would be remiss. I believe this entire podcast and this film arguably is redeemed by just immortalizing actor Steve James getting to utter those words on film that should not be forgotten, but should be enshrined for posterity.

Watching a bunch of 82 movies with you, I just want to say this, and I don't know if I'm right here, but now we often single out a lot of the black and minority actors in this film because we recognize for a lot of these men, their talent and the way that the culture at the time didn't really give them the opportunities to do these things. Yeah. But also, for example, the actor who played Captain Morgan in The Sword and the Sorcerer, who we adore. Yes. Right. But a lot of these guys are giving performances that, Paul, it's almost like these men knew that the roles they were getting in these films were not entirely up to par with their talent, and perhaps they might have been aware of it and suddenly commenting on it in some other action like Abraham Lincoln in Megaforce and Thomas Jefferson. What was the name in Megaforce? I mean, it's like, if I were a black actor in the 80s and I got on a movie like this, and I'm playing for the 85th time, if I've been lucky enough to have a career in Hollywood, I'm literally playing for the 85th time the black sidekick to some dumb white meatball, right? I mean, I assume these guys are going to have a little fun with this shit, right?

Yeah, I hope he did. And I hope he ate well at craft service. I hope that he had fun. But yes, we deserve and they deserve more.

Much better. Now, Paul, there follows now, I do have a thing here which says, Orange Glider Fu? Question mark. I'm going to assume you know what that means.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah.

There follows a sequence that is one of the most comical parts in this film, which is that because The Soldier shot up an embassy, because there's only 50 some hours left, because a black man walked into a bar in Texas, I guess. We have what I call the-

I think it's Barstow. The police, when they come, it says Barstow.

Oh, like they couldn't afford Texas?

Well, it just adds to the timeline. It's further, a further flight from Berlin.

Exactly. Yeah. But producer Brad, the F-13 is an incredible piece of equipment.

So now the soldiers force has them too?

Oh yeah. No, they all have F-13s. They're the soldiers team. Anyway, there follows what I call the Talking Embassy Sequence, which is that literally there was clearly not enough money to hire actors and build sets for scenes in which people in embassies were angry at what was going on in the world. So they literally cut to still shots of buildings over which I played phone calls. And the first one, I believe, is the is the English Embassy, right? Yeah.

London calls the US President.

And you literally hear a woman who sounds sort of like Margaret Thatcher going, I've heard the Eastern European Embassy has been shot, Mr. President. I'm very angry. And then they cut to a building. Then there's something happens, right? And then they cut to a building that's supposed to be Berlin. And it's some guy going, Mr. President, I am pissed off at you shooting up the embassy. And then later they cut to the French Embassy. And I assume it's meter on going, Mr. President, I'm so angry. You never see anybody. It's really just the buildings with this shit as a voiceover. It's, I don't know if it's a masterful way of establishing tension and stakes or if it's just the hallmark of a very cheap movie. Paul, your thought?

Well, let's just say this truck is a very avant-garde construction of a sequence because we start with the expectation that we're going to get a series of little vignettes like the one in this cowboy bar of the team being found and assembled and recruited. But the bar is a misdirect. It is by far the most elaborate, the only fully-staged actual scene to do this. Because then we get this truncated back and forth between inner cuts of B-roll and VO of world leaders calling the US president, interspersed with or intercutting with them. Oh, one of the team that we have this long, long footage that they were, I'm sure, very proud of.

It goes on forever.

Of this red acrobatic glider. And the pilot is being called to work, is being summoned by the team.

That's right, the acrobatic glider pilot is, in fact, a member of The Soldier's team, yes.

But we're sitting here for minutes watching this.

Oh, no, it goes on.

And it's just like they were showing off. They're like, oh, we got this great footage. We got to use it because it was hard to get, and we paid for it. And it's just, it turns into this art installation.

I don't know if before your traumatic injury, we discussed that James Glickenhaus is and was a world famous Ferrari collector, which leads me to think that literally this movie was a boondoggle from somebody who likes fast cars, airplanes, all this stuff, to like travel to the world and get a bunch of fast cars and airplanes together and be in them, because this glider scene, like other sequences in the movie, every scene of transit in this movie, whether it's a jet, whether it goes on forever, yes, so yeah, it's a whole thing.

And then, Paris calls the president over, you know, B-roll shot, and then more B-roll, but now it's snowy mountains. There is a climber who is being called to the office, and then we wait and we watch as a helicopter is dispatched to this mountain to get here, and it is just slow and lifeless and boring, and it just like drags on, and then we intercut to Berlin, calling the president, and then finally we get the soldiers team assembled. Again, they've had to crisscross the world, burning countless hours during the literal ticking time bomb of the nuclear terrorist threat.

And what are they going to catch up with them?

Eating pizza, drinking beer, and Jack Daniels, and then we get this anecdote. In Berlin. Yes, in West Berlin, in the Israeli embassy, and then we get this digression about the Nixon anecdote, about the nuclear suitcase.

Yes, yes, no, totally, because what we're about to find out.

Yes, it's a shocking revelation.

The greatest plot point in the history of film, really. I mean, there's literally Rosebud, and then there's this in The Soldier. Now, look, the soldier and his team over pizza, beer, and Jack Daniels have come to the conclusion that it was in fact a rogue Russian operation, and that the only way. No, no, no, that's why Drakna tried to, never mind. Anyway, that's why the man in the tight white pants. Anyway, look, the point being that the soldier realizes they don't have enough time to talk to the authorities about what's going on. The US is not going to discover this. So the US is going to have no choice but to declare war on Israel.

Yes.

And the soldier has to take matters in his own hands. We don't entirely know how, but what we do know at this point, Paul, is that the soldier has his own. Take it away, Paul.

Nuclear suitcase.

Because one time Nixon went cray and tried to launch missiles and they decided that one guy needed to have the ability to stop the president from launching nukes. And that man could only be.

The soldier.

Yeah.

Apparently, or something.

Not only does he have his own F-13, does he have the magical transforming Ford Fiesta of Doom. Does he eat pizza during horrible crises? Does he own a virtual reality simulator with a 60-millimeter predictor? The soldier being the most important man on earth has his own. I have to say it again. Paul, he has his own.

Nuclear suitcase.

The authorities of the world have trusted Ken Wall. Hey, I'm Ken Wall. How are you doing? He has my nuclear suitcase with a nuclear suitcase of his own. Just in case the authorities of the world can't be trusted with their own ordinance.

Yes. This raises so many questions, but it also I think maybe answers the next question the film raises. Which is? Which is that our, and forgive me for forgetting her name, but our fetch.

Calling her Rebecca.

Sure. Yes. Rebecca from Cheers, who is secretly head of covert operations for Mossad. Suddenly, inexplicably in the next scene, puts the moves on the soldier. It's holding out of the blue. I can only surmise that it is just because of the irresistible lure, an attraction that is manifested by the fact that this man has his own nuclear suitcase.

That's right. Now, in a normal movie-

Her name is Susan, by the way.

Susan.

Anyway, in a normal film, we would understand the context of this hookup, is that we are in a lull between the soldier going on the most dangerous mission of his career, which he will be supporting him in.

The world is potentially about to end in nuclear annihilation.

By the way, inside the nuclear suitcase is something I call Chekhov's syringe.

Yes.

It just happens to be a syringe in the nuclear suitcase.

They got all sorts of goodies in the suitcase.

There's all sorts of shit in there. Yeah. Anyway, in a normal movie, it would be made clear by dramatic scenes in which each character has a need and the other a want and maybe they're clashing, that this is a desperate last-minute attempt at sexual ecstasy before the potential end of the world. In this movie, they're just fucking over pizza. But as an avid reader of techno-thrillers, you understand what's happening, don't you? Because that's really who this movie is for. It's like you read techno-thrillers, you know what's going on anyway, because you've read all the tropes, you're fine, right?

Yes. I'm sure there are subtexts of political commentary in this scene and sequence, but they're a little obscure.

Completely lost on me.

But to execute the police plan, they're going to have to split up. And so the team now that has spent countless hours assembling in West Berlin now has to leave and go back to the US.

Back to the US. We literally recruited everybody from the US, presumably.

And while The Soldier and Susan decide they need to go make themselves known at the Berlin Wall in order to alert the KGB.

Paul, you're missing the greatest thing about this film right now.

Oh, God. I blame my pain medication.

I apologize for calling you. First of all, producer Brad had his hand up. He's a very polite man. Producer Brad, please give it to us.

No, you're on it. It's about this, the missed clip.

So, oh, there's the next clip?

No, the one you're going to bring up, Nixon?

Oh, you know what?

Let's hear the Nixon story that leads us to the introduction of the nuclear suitcase.

We totally skipped over that.

Go ahead. Late one night during the last days of his administration, President Nixon put the 82nd Nuclear Strike Force on red alert for no apparent reason. The CIA was afraid the man was losing his mind. We wanted to make sure that no matter what he did, we could still obtain access to SAC headquarters or any missile silo in the United States. You think these codes still work? Yeah. When I programmed these override codes into the SAC computer, I made sure that they could never be changed, erased, or located. I'm surprised it's so compact. Yeah. It takes a lot less to end the world than you might imagine.

Wow. The Soldier is not only the most important man in the world with his own suitcase, he personally programmed the nuclear codes. Also-

He's a man of many skills.

He is a warrior philosopher, my friend. He's a warrior philosopher.

With a minor in computer science.

Yeah. But back then, it was like Commodore PET computers, and they did it all on basics, so it was fine.

Fortran. Fortran.

Cobalt, right? Paul, when I listen to Ken Wall's delivery in this, I can only conclude that much like you, he is on opiates.

Well, that I can neither confirm or deny, but he does seem to toss off these lines with a version to the gravity of their meaning. But I guess it's just because he's seen it all, done it all, so this is just a normal day at the office for him in terms of the stakes that they got to face and wake up to every day.

Paul, I think from this moment on, you and I should just do the whole podcast like we're The Soldier pondering really important stuff. Maybe not.

Sorry.

Now, guys, the most compelling facet of this film is about to take place, which is that we cut to the Russian guy with the orange hair. Remember him? He has been the head of the KGB training camp, and we've also found out he's the head of the KGB apparently, and soon we're going to find out he's also the head of Soviet Strategic Air Command, but that's later. Now, right now, we catch up with the Soviet agent with the orange hair, the guy with the shotgun, the arm shotgun. Right?

Yes.

And he's standing by a telex machine, and for the next half hour until he shows up again.

He spends so much of his life by that telex machine. He's got to hate that fucking telex machine. He's just waiting. He is chained to like a prisoner of fate.

Yes. Now, for anyone under 60 who is listening to this podcast, and that's not even me and you, Paul, we're too young to know about telex, right?

Yes.

Telex was a system where on one end you had a keyboard and a printer, right?

No one cares. No one cares. Yeah.

Okay, never mind.

Wow.

Opiate Paul is like startling, angry Paul. I love opiate Paul. Okay.

Anyway. Stop. I'm laughing. I can't.

Okay. Then my next note is a plane lands for 15 minutes.

Now we're in Kansas. We're in a Kansas airfield, a private jet lands. Maybe it's a disguised version of the F-13.

Based on my spreadsheet, there's 10 hours left at this point.

Sure. The Soldier's team arrives, minus the Soldier, and they head to a secret barn base, where there is a kindly woman and her son, I think, the neighbors, who are like, what's going on? It's like, oh, that's just the people who rent the barn or whatever. Very, I don't know why.

The Soldier's team rents a weird barn in the middle of Kansas.

Apparently, they have all these random safe houses in the world, and they have one in Kansas that they're going to, and they get-

Oh, my God, Paul. I just realized that the Soldier is a crossover with The Day After, which takes place in Lawrence, Kansas, near the missile silos.

This is, yes, it's a prequel or something.

Holy shit.

They very conveniently, in this safe house that's a barn in Kansas, have an Air Force car-

Like you do.

Air Force uniforms-

Like you do.

And IDs-

Like you do.

Which enable them to infiltrate the nearby Air Force ICBM missile base. That they proceed to, which does have an iconic, and if I could have any prop from this movie, it would probably be the peace is our business sign that hangs in the missile base. They proceed to talk their way in with the IDs, that they don't check the trunk at the gate, obviously, because they look very convincing as Air Force dignitaries. They hack the video surveillance, infiltrate the control room, just in time, because the US then orders an attack on Israel. Yeah, the US has decided they're going to capitulate to the terrorist threat without even confirming anything. They're just like, whatever.

Fuck it, let's nuke Israel.

We're going to attack our ally Israel. We're going to drive them out of the West Bank. You know, okay. Israel then orders that if the US enters Israeli airspace, they will launch their own nuclear attack on the Saudi oil fields.

I mean, how revolutionary is this? In the Cold War, we're not fighting Russia. Well, actually we are fighting. We're fighting Russia, nevermind.

Yeah, it's a mind boggling new constellation of plot twists and geopolitical reconfiguration that this film imagines that are dazzling in their science fiction fantasy.

It's like an inverted similitude, you know?

Yes.

We're literally looking at a triumph of, I just made up that word, inverted similitude. That's what we're looking at here.

I think that you should trade that. Meanwhile, back in West Berlin, the Soldier and Susan in the trusty, unstoppable Ford Fiesta are trying to get to East Berlin because the Soldier is not just a man of action, he's a man of persuasion, and he feels he just needs to talk to the KGB.

Paul, the Soldier has the ability to attract Soviets with his sheer presence. So they go up and on top of the Berlin Wall, and the Soldier declares that...

Well, first he tries to get through normally through Checkpoint Charlie, but he's recognized by the American soldiers because they were the same ones who were at the embassy, and apparently they have a different shift now, and so now they're assigned to Checkpoint Charlie, maybe as punishment for the debacle that happened at the embassy.

But one correction, they're no longer in the Fiesta in this scene.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes.

Now they're in the Porsche 911, right?

Correct.

Paul.

That was just a dream of my heart that they were still in the Fiesta.

Well, the thing is, as you know, the Ford Fiesta can turn.

But the Ford Fiesta could not do what they're going to do.

No. So it transformed from the F13 to the Ford Fiesta to the Porsche 911. This is the soldier man. They just couldn't afford the CGI because it didn't exist back then. Paul. They're going to go through Checkpoint Charlie because that's apparently the only thing about East Berlin that this director knows. So it's like the big piece of techno battle. Yeah, we're just going to take the car to Checkpoint Charlie. And they get to Checkpoint Charlie, which famously is the checkpoint between East and West Berlin.

And it's the real Checkpoint Charlie, too. They shot there.

Yeah.

Is it?

They claim they were the first film to do so.

It's insane.

They were. Yes.

Boggles the mud. Although I think this might be an appropriate moment because I will forget later because again, I believe that this necessitates a shout out to the locations person on the film.

Ah, yes. You know what, Paul? Please wax rap sonically.

And I believe we identified and I don't have it in front of me that it is the great man Bernstein who was locations manager on The Soldier. She would later go on and I haven't seen her in way too long but I've acquainted with her. She's an incredible producer. She produced the great Friday Night Lights series that was shot here in Austin.

Now Paul, because now we're doing that thing where we talk about famous people we know, you know, like we're just bragging about our famous friends.

Sorry.

No, are you kidding? I'm in. I'm doing it myself right now.

Good.

I'm going.

You're up.

Because you know what, we decided to look at the credits of the film just to see who was responsible, where to cast the blame. But also I found out that the best boy in this movie, which is one of the electrical and lights department and camera department people, is a gentleman named John Newby. Now John Newby also, I happen to have a connection to him. He was the director of photography on an excellent show that I worked on called Boomtown, which was created by Graham Yost, and it was on TV back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But also he was the director of photography on my show, The Middleman, and he is one of the greatest human beings I've ever worked with. I am happy that I got to experience, honestly, the most positive thing out of this is we both got to see somebody that we know and like and who we know went into greater things. That's great. Now, Paul, if that is your name, because I honestly am beginning to think it's Rebecca. Here's what happens next, and it is just, so they get to Checkpoint Charlie, and the ship standing in front of Checkpoint Charlie with a machine gun is, as you pointed out, the exact same guy who was the embassy guard on the night shift the night before. Shocking. Either he has been so rapidly demoted and punished that he literally got court-martialed in less than 12 hours, demoted and made a checkpoint guard at Checkpoint Charlie, or the dragnet to find the soldier in East Berlin has been so thorough that they have placed the one guy who can recognize him on Checkpoint Charlie in order to make sure he doesn't slip into East Germany, right?

That would be impressively astute, if that were the case.

Well, I'm going to always give this movie the benefit of thinking it's impressively astute. Paul, the soldier now, there's now a chase scene, because the soldier is being pursued by American agents to East Berlin again.

Another chase scene.

Another chase scene, but now the...

And we're intercutting with the soldier's team back in Kansas, who have taken over the base, or control of the base, rather, through a variety of means we don't need to get into. And they are preparing to launch an ICB, which, dear listeners who may not know, that is an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, a nuclear missile.

That's right, which has MIRVs, which are Multiple Impact Reentry Vehicles. So that means you can hit multiple targets at the same time. I only know this because of the film War Games, which was one of the great summer movies that we have not covered. So, Paul, I want to go on record as saying, first of all, we have a big chase scene, and the highlight of the chase scene is that the soldier has to get to the KGB.

Yes, he has to get into East Berlin, but the only path, the only gateway is being blocked by the one man who can recognize him. Yes, he's closed off to him. So what do you do? How are you going to get into East Berlin when there is the Berlin Wall?

You trust the Mossad. That's right. Because it turns out that Rebecca's boss had the foresight, or they planned this in a previous scene we never saw. Now, we saw them eat pizza. We never saw them plan anything. So I guess that's the movie's idea of having suspense is that they don't tell you the plan.

But they didn't tell the soldier either. He didn't know.

That's right. They didn't tell the soldier either. Neither the soldier nor the audience knows what the plan is. It's awesome. All the soldier knows is he has to get to East Berlin and stand there so the KGB will be naturally attracted to him so that he can play his endgame. So the head of the Mossad, who's also apparently the Israeli Consul, who may or may not be the Prime Minister of Israel, has rigged a car carrying vehicle with a ramp.

Yeah.

And the ramp is literally at the exact right angle that if the F-13 Ford Fiesta is in its final optimal form as a Porsche 911 and you hit it at exactly...

No, don't steal his thunder. Don't steal his thunder. Let me just say that this trailer is part very conspicuously. Like, it's hard to miss. But then we get the runner up for the best line in the film, which is...

How pathetic is it to be the runner up for the best line in this f-ing film?

And so now we get the promise of spectacle as bequeathed to us by Susan slash Rebecca.

Rebecca.

Michael and I figured it out.

If you hit it at 85 in third gear, we'll make it to the Russian side.

By the way, Tangerine Dream, way to do the heavy lifting there. You're lifting a lot.

And this now leads me to a question that I never thought I would be desperate to ask Robert Zemeckis.

When he wrote the line, when this baby hits 88 MPH, you're going to see some serious shit. Was he quoting the Soldier?

Exactly. Paul, was he?

Because I thought the exact same motherfucking thing right there. Yeah.

Yes.

Zemeckis, we caught you.

This is now the question of our time.

Oh, my God. Paul, do you think that the 20th century might have been fixed if we figured this out earlier?

I don't know.

Oh, my God.

But how crazy is this? The similarity and the stakes be like everything. It's unexplained.

Paul, I don't even know that I can continue talking about The Soldier. No, I mean it. Now, Paul, at this point, I want to take you to the paradisical yellow pad that is my notes on this film, because here, I was watching this movie. I don't know. I think you saw it on Tubi. I saw it on Amazon Freebie, and at this point, the movie cut to commercials.

Saw it on Roku.

Roku, okay. I ain't fancy like you.

The deuce, you say. Are you kidding me? It cut to commercials here?

And my note here is, the commercials are a welcome respite. And maybe that's just because the tension is so amazing, Paul. That must be it. It's so tense at this point.

Yeah, because then he revs it up, and he races toward the ramp of this tractor trailer that has been just perfectly set.

Placed there by the Israeli Prime Minister himself.

And you're really kind of trying to do the physics math, like in your head, like, is this, this looks a little iffy, looks kind of like, I don't know. And they jump the Porsche to East Berlin, crashing over the top of the Berlin Wall, spraying debris of concrete before them, as they then skid to a stop in front of a bunch of Soviets. Yeah, like KGBs, yeah.

Yeah, he attracts Russians with his presence.

Yeah.

Paul, the concrete was strangely spongy and bouncy, dare I say. Strangely pliable concrete that they run through. The Porsche literally flies through a section of the Berlin Wall, and the concrete is literally bouncing around it.

It's Nerf Berlin Wall.

It's Nerf Berlin Wall, yeah, it's the Nerflin Wall. Yeah. Now, Paul, so at this point, the stakes now are, so the soldiers' men have commandeered a silo. We don't know why. We think it's to stop the United States from nuking Israel.

Somehow, but we're like, what are they aiming their nuke at?

Yeah, I don't know. The Israelis are going to nuke Saudi Arabia in retaliation, not since the Second Gulf War. Terrorists from Afghanistan attack America, but we invade Iraq instead. This is like that. It's like terrorists threaten to blow up an oil field. We threaten to blow up Israel. Israel threatens to blow up Saudi Arabia.

The same oil field that's already got a nuke like planted on it.

But if I'm king of Saudi Arabia, I'm like, oh yeah, well, we're going to nuke France, fuckers. And I'd be like, why? And he's like, I don't know.

You make an important observation. Nowhere in the narrative proceedings of this film, do we hear anything from Saudi Arabia, even though they're central and they're most under threat by the plot. But whatever.

But I imagine just following the logic of this movie, like their response to the United States nuking Israel and Israel nuking them, is that they're going to nuke Luxembourg.

Yeah, you would think that they would have some response or opinion, maybe a thought that they might express on the world stage.

Perhaps try to find a diplomatic solution.

Yeah.

A threat to their entire economy, but whatevs, it's fine.

Yeah, I don't know. That seems to be a little bit of an oversight. Maybe that's just its own movie. But then The Soldier's plan suddenly becomes crystal clear as he confronts finally face to face.

Finally face to face.

The KGB, Telex, Wielder of Doom is face to face with The Soldier. In East Berlin, he's in enemy territory, surrounded by the enemy and plays his ace up his sleeve, which is that, I have control of a nuclear missile, and if you don't, we know it's you who set the nuke in the Saudi oil fields. If you don't disarm it, remove it. I'm gonna nuke Moscow. Just me personally.

I'm personally gonna nuke Moscow. You know what? That nuke is signed courtesy of The Soldier. By the way, in this movie, I'm shocked that The Soldier's men didn't get in the silo and literally hand-paint that on the nuke, you know?

Yeah.

We have Ken Wall saying it, too.

You know what? Let's hear it.

Oh, right. Yes.

I can't even. I need a second to compose myself.

I've always wanted to see Moscow. However, in about, oh, about nine minutes, that will no longer be possible.

What do you mean?

I mean that four of my friends have control of 40 megatons of ICBM sitting in a silo in Smith Center, Kansas. And if the bomb in the oil field goes off, they're going to nuke Moscow.

You're full of shit.

You're full of shit.

That also maybe makes the top three. Like right there, that reading is pretty nice. But that's the question. Is he full of shit? Or is he not? And is our KGB antagonist willing to place that bet?

Are you going to play chicken with the soldier, Paul? Is that what you're saying?

Exactly. Who just crashed a Porsche through the Berlin Wall into enemy territory?

Just to say, I would really like to visit Moscow, but I don't know if that's going to be possible. This is literally like in a mob movie, like in the worst mob movie ever. This is the guy going, it's a really nice bookstore you got here. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Bookstore is an interesting choice.

Whatever. It's just like he literally delivers that line like it's a shakedown, like, hey, nice bakery, nice olive oil importing business. Be ashamed if somebody were to burn down.

I do now want to see a mob movie where the mafia are shaking down independent bookstores.

With nukes. With nukes. Sure.

Why, little suitcase nukes. So anyway, the KGB guy does not have the, let's say, I don't know, biological material to call that bluff.

I believe the word you're saying is what my Puerto Rican brethren call huevos. Does he in fact have the huevos to play chicken with? Because chickens lay eggs. So yeah. So does he in fact have the huevos to play chicken with the soldier?

Yes. He does not. So we cut two Russian troops parachuting kind of clumsily into the Saudi oil field to disable and-

Into that little patch of sand outside of the sandbox outside of the- Which they've tricked that with barbed wire.

Yeah, and a wall of oil drums. So now they got to find the oil drum with the nuke in it and disable it. Then the American attack on Israel is called off just in the nick of time and they fly away. Then suddenly we basically cut to Susan and the soldier at the Statue of Liberty.

Rebecca, Rebecca, yes.

Yes.

But Paul, let me ask you a question. Now, if you went through all of the planting and payoff in this movie, then wouldn't it be the perfect payoff if the Russian guy with the orange hair lifts his hand and he's got the shotgun strapped to his hand, and he shoots the soldier and then he just cut to Moscow exploding?

This ending seems so truncated. And I know that's hard to believe for the listener, given how long this podcast has gone. It's literally, for us, has gone weeks. But it's very strange and it's disconcerting that after all that build up and everything, everything is just wrapped up tidily. The ICBM doors that open on the roof of this building are closed by the soldiers team. They apparently are not arrested and court martial. I don't, there's just, we're not getting any-

Or independently attending to nuke Russia is fine.

Yeah, yeah, we're committing nuclear terrorism. It's all just like, oh, it's all, everything's good. Everything's fine now. It's all cool. No, it's not. It's like, it's not at all.

No, it really is not. No, no, it is not.

The movie has to end. They burned through their, yeah, they burned through their budget and schedule and they got to wrap it up. And so suddenly we teleport to Statue of Liberty and The Soldier and Susan slash Rebecca live happily ever after.

The Soldier who literally just, I mean literally he's committed treason. He has committed nuclear terrorism. The KGB just let him walk past checkpoint Charlie and so did the Shemp who let him escape the embassy apparently. Or maybe the last thing he asked the Russian, the orange haired Russian guy was, hey, can you, can you get a car carrier and just put the ramp at the right attitude there so I can jump back? I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I know it does. I mean, it's all out the window. Everything's out the window by the end of this movie. So it's like, oh, whatever.

We're now just at the Statue of Liberty where weirdly, Rebecca and The Soldier are not fucking. They're just standing there enjoying Liberty. Right. This is the kind of thing we're like, because the closest to a real movie that I can put this movie to is one of those, you know how on The Simpsons they have McBain? You know, the action here on The Simpsons, like McBain is based on Arnold Schwarzenegger, the guy's named Rainer Wolfcastle, and it always ends with somebody saying something that winds up with him going, yeah, in bed, you know, he's like, I'm thinking of having my own terrorist activity in bed, you know, and it cuts to him in bed with the woman. So I imagine that The Soldier and Rebecca would be having sex again except that they already did, right?

Right.

So they're just enjoying liberty.

And by the way, McBain is a 1991 film directed by James Glickenhouse.

What? Whoa! What? Whoa!

What was his film McBain about? Did it star Rainer Wolf Castle from The Simpsons?

Christopher Walken, Maria Conchita Alonso, Vietnam Fed, reforms his old team to help overthrow a dictator.

Of course he does. Well, McBain.

Are you saying we now have to continue Multiplex Overthruster to cover 1991?

You know what, Paul, I think we should just chuck the entire Multiplex Overthruster Summer of 82 concept and rename it Glickenhouse Overthruster and just talk about Glickenhouse movies, man.

So at the risk of straining our listeners' patience more than we already have, I want to ask a question that I have my own answer to, but I'm curious what your answer would be. If you had the magic wand of the movie gods to say, I'm going to give this film just a dollop more money and a smidgen more time, and I could get one more shot, one more set up shot scene to add at any point in the film. Is there something you would wish for to inject as an additive coup de grace into this film?

Well, I think that much as Sidney Sheinberg re-cut Brazil to have a happy ending, I would re-cut this film with the ending that I pitched to you. I would literally just have the orange-haired guy take his shotgun out, kill the soldier, and then Moscow gets nuked. Because honestly, by the narrative standards of this film, that would make every bit as much sense as anything else that has happened in this film. But Paul, what would you do?

So while your vision of nihilism is on a sail, I would counter with something simpler.

Do go on.

Which is I would add one shot at the ending, where we're at the Statue of Liberty, and then we probably can't do this in the crown or in the torch. It might need to be at the corner of the foundation, at the base, where there's this one simple shot of the, we've established Susan, Rebecca and The Soldier in a loving embrace, but then peeking around the corner behind them, unseen by them is Klaus Kinski.

Drakna!

Drakna returns. Then cut to black.

Where I thought you were going was that, you know how the Statue of Liberty has these sort of stepped out kind of bases, right?

Yes.

That standing on those was The Soldier's entire team in a kind of...

Posing.

Album cover pose, nodding sagely.

I mean, that's good too. That's good too. I just feel like we need just a little extra morsel, a little after dinner mint of Klaus Kinski at the end of the film.

Dare I say the quantum of Drakna, my friend.

Yes, exactly. Precisely. Beautifully said.

Let's leave The Soldier on that note because really, let's.

Let's leave it forever. Far behind us.

Far, far away. I think that the world of cinema's loss is the world of Ferrari collections gain. Producer Brad, can you tell us how did this movie do at the box office? How did we do it?

Well, it opened August 10th with Friday the 13th, part 3 in Fast Times, but it didn't show up in the charts until August 27th. And this weekend, it was ranked number 18 with $880,000. It ultimately made $6.3 million, and for the year, it was ranked 106. All time, it's $6,228 behind the Pope of Greenwich Village and ahead of Robert Altman's shortcuts.

Oh wow, really?

This movie made more money than shortcuts.

So Criterion should not have done a special edition of shortcuts and really done The Soldier, right?

This should be double-sided. I also want to add there were four other films that we should just remember at this time, the kind of movies this is playing against. There's Death Wish 2 with Charles Bronson. There were two Chuck Norris movies, Silent Rage and Forced Vengeance.

They just came out at the same time?

These were all 1982.

Holy crap. Okay.

And The Challenge, which is the Scott Glenn Toshiro Mufuni film set in Japan. Oh yeah.

Well yeah, I remember that one. That's the one where Scott Glenn becomes like a ninja or something, right?

He's a boxer and he's got to deliver a sword to Japan, something like that.

Producer Brad, let's just, I need to get out of the world of The Soldier because I literally can't put a sentence together anymore. Producer Brad, now I believe that we're on the glide path to the end of the Summer of 82. We're in August, right?

We are. We have one episode left. Next weekend, we're going to September 3rd of 82, which is Labor Day weekend, the last weekend of the summer movies. The charts I look at, some say there's two movies, some say there's one movie opening. So the movie we're not going to watch is The Concrete Jungle, which has Jill St. John as a prison warden at a women's prison. So we are not going to watch that one.

Was this a remake of The Concrete Jungle?

I don't know. I just looked up the title. I didn't.

Okay, it's got to be okay. There you go.

But the movie I think we should watch is Paul Mazursky's Tempest with John Cassavetes, Molly Ringwald, Susan Saraldi, and Gina Rollins, and Raul Julia.

And Raul Julia. Oh my God. You know, I saw that movie on the movie channel approximately five billion times because that's what you did. That's what they showed on the movie channel and we didn't have HBO. And wow, Paul, do you dare?

Never seen it.

Oh my God. You know, it's funny that the Summer of 82 podcast should end with Paul Mazursky movie. Paul Mazursky directed some amazing movies, not the least of which is Moscow and The Hudson. Yes. Which is one of Robin Williams' best performances. He was actually in Enemies of Love story. Yes. With Antelope Houston. This guy is a real director who made some wonderful films. And I think Paul, why don't we watch Paul Mazursky's Tempest as a kind of concession to our maturation as we would go onto more high minded concerns and we would know, in no way spent the rest of our adult lives writing about things like Star Wars and Star Trek. Right Paul?

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is wholly plausible.

Says the creator of The Middleman to one of the founding members of Ain't It Cool.

Yeah, sure. In my youth, would never found myself anywhere near this. I mean, maybe, maybe not actually, because you know, I mean, Shakespeare, Tempest, Forbidden Planet. I've never seen it. So I'm curious and Raul, Julie is kind of all I need to know. So I'm in, but I'm also scared. Well, I'm also starting to feel a little sad that this journey is coming to an end.

Yeah, I'm not a happy camper about it either. But the thing is, is it's interesting how, you know, the Summer of 82 is so known as the greatest summer in all movies. It's actually the first eight weeks of the Summer of 82. And then we pay for that. Then we pay hard. You know, the gods of cinema regaled us with some of the best films ever made in genre. And then the gods of cinema said, and now we taketh away. And wow, I just hope the Tempest is a fun watch.

You get dessert first, and then, yeah, you got it.

And then you get a sandwich of, and it ain't peanut butter and jelly, my friend. No, no.

But you know, we may end on a high note with this film. I don't know, but hope springs eternal.

Yes, it does.

We'll see what happens. Yeah. And then after that, we may have some other things to say or reflect on.

So all I want to say then is with the scintillating prospect of hearing me and Paul discuss Paul Mazursky's The Tempest as the final film of Multiplex Overthruster Summer of 82, I tell you, my friends, that we will see you next week in line at the Multiplex.