Afghan Breakdown

My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

The Soviet withdrawal after nine years of war in Afghanistan is given a wacky pastiche treatment in "Afghan Breakdown". Downbeat pic has its darkly comic moments caused by dubbing virtually the entire picture into Italian.

Available in both tv mini-series and feature versions, pic shot in Turkistan and Leningrad, avoids the pretentiousness of such parallel world films as "The Beast", in which all-American actors played Russians and Afghanis. Instead, Michele Placido is almost the only Italian in sight, but the Ruso co-stars speak and even gesture in Italian.

He stoically walks through this role as a major sent by a cruel colonel on various missions to protect the Russian flank during the pullout. An air of gloom and defeat is sustained by helmer Vladimire Bortko. The Soviet involvement (never referred to explicitly as an invasion) is criticized heavily.

War horrors are treated here as a given rather than peculiar to the Afghan conflict. The career soldier's point-of-view and the problems of a dogface are both presented.

Several corny subplots, seemingly truncated in the feature version, fail to arouse much interest. Placido is carrying on with blonde nurse Tatiana Doghhileva, who is constantly being hit on by the sex-starved colonel. Several visually impressive battle scenes punctuate the talkfest. Glum finale is a downer, as intended.