"Red Heat" is a somewhat strange film released in 1988, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Belushi and Lawrence Fishburne. I recently watched it on a Swedish TV channel, where it was marketed as a "comedy". Ahem, I beg you pardon? More like an extravaganza in Murder One (and some mayhem) if you ask me! But sure, Arnie and Belushi do try to add some comic relief here and there. Arnold usually by not smiling at all. He´s supposed to be a hard boiled Communist police officer from the old Soviet Union!
The film was made during Gorbachev´s perestroika/glasnost, which may explain why the Russians are the "good guys" in this production. The "Soviet" segments were actually taped in Hungary, at the time the most "liberal" Eastern bloc nation. Curiously, "Red Heat" is so Russophile that it even assimilated Russian racism against non-Russian ethnic groups in the old Soviet Union. The villain is a Georgian (from Georgia south of Russia) and another bad guy is described as a "Mongolian hippie"...
On the American end, the bad guys are African-Americans and led by a certain Abdul Elijah, who turns out to be a Black supremacist, Marxist and drug kingpin. He is clearly intended as a hybrid between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X (or perhaps the Black Panthers). Abdul hates all White people with equal gusto, including...Russians. OK, so there is little Wokeness in this film, if you get the drift.
And yes, I noticed that the bus at the end was marked "American Liberty Lines". Perhaps interesting as cultural studies in 2025?
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