Double Identity is being aired almost daily now on Showtime. I give it ten stars (a first here?! No matter) for two things I found rang true.
First, the mood (1992) is pretty authentic. I was working a lot at that time as UN staff in Sofia and Prague and Warsaw and Budapest and Berlin. This was just about the time the Berlin Wall came down and there was this strong feeling of underlying chaos and not really any strong sense of a central government. Many things were fluid and up for grabs. Certainly there were some crooks, but they didn't need to be of the gun-toting variety, look at how some of the oil oligarchs made it big in Russia, they merely had to game the system.
It was hard to even phone out of the Hiltons at the time (hotels just like that one existed in every capital, in part to suck in people with dollars) and the phone networks absolutely sucked. I would have given a lot for a cell phone! But the roads were indeed often cobbled and the newer buildings often very ugly and street lighting was spasmodic and in some of the countries the gasoline fumes from the cars smelled like cabbage water. I did always like the food. Their tomatoes and fruit were something to die for.
I miss those times because there was a lot of idealism pushing its way through (much of it from out of the universities as in Prague) and appreciated the courage and earnestness and hard work of many good people many of whom had been averaging maybe $100 a month in a high level profession. Someone in the forum here said none of the script should have been in Russian but Russian was the lingua franca for all those countries and Bulgarians used it with great ease and Bulgaria (which got a good deal out of Comecon) never hated the Russians as much as say the Poles and Hungarians.
Second, I though the Miko character was pretty authentic. I don't recall a lot of blonds in Sofia but in Warsaw there were and are hundreds if not thousands of blonds not too unlike her. In St Petersburg and Moscow too. They typically have a great deal of confidence and that icy lack of fear and no problems in asserting themselves. A few were high class call girls (openly sitting in every hotel) but many were in the public institutions like schools and hospitals and laboratories and hotel management, teaching and organizing and researching.
I liked how Miko spoke and carried herself, and her suits and her blond hair, especially when she had it up. Very good eye contact and control. She came across as about age 30 and I liked her in-command and decisive persona a little more in this movie than her personas in some of the others I have just checked out where she plays younger and more dependent. Typically such women (unless they were call girls) were remote and watchful rather than available and the one really inauthentic moment in the movie for me was when she and the Kilmer character lunged at one another the second time they met, in the hotel.
Thanks to the makers of the film for getting these things really right, and thanks to Miko for an elegant portrayal. Her early ballet maybe helped her a lot in poise and control of her movement. If she can find other parts like this one, she should keep going for years. I hope she looks.
And to me Kilmer played his character just fine. As far as I could see he was meant to be a somewhat bumbling do-good doctor so that the real action figure played by Miko could keep fishing him out.
First, the mood (1992) is pretty authentic. I was working a lot at that time as UN staff in Sofia and Prague and Warsaw and Budapest and Berlin. This was just about the time the Berlin Wall came down and there was this strong feeling of underlying chaos and not really any strong sense of a central government. Many things were fluid and up for grabs. Certainly there were some crooks, but they didn't need to be of the gun-toting variety, look at how some of the oil oligarchs made it big in Russia, they merely had to game the system.
It was hard to even phone out of the Hiltons at the time (hotels just like that one existed in every capital, in part to suck in people with dollars) and the phone networks absolutely sucked. I would have given a lot for a cell phone! But the roads were indeed often cobbled and the newer buildings often very ugly and street lighting was spasmodic and in some of the countries the gasoline fumes from the cars smelled like cabbage water. I did always like the food. Their tomatoes and fruit were something to die for.
I miss those times because there was a lot of idealism pushing its way through (much of it from out of the universities as in Prague) and appreciated the courage and earnestness and hard work of many good people many of whom had been averaging maybe $100 a month in a high level profession. Someone in the forum here said none of the script should have been in Russian but Russian was the lingua franca for all those countries and Bulgarians used it with great ease and Bulgaria (which got a good deal out of Comecon) never hated the Russians as much as say the Poles and Hungarians.
Second, I though the Miko character was pretty authentic. I don't recall a lot of blonds in Sofia but in Warsaw there were and are hundreds if not thousands of blonds not too unlike her. In St Petersburg and Moscow too. They typically have a great deal of confidence and that icy lack of fear and no problems in asserting themselves. A few were high class call girls (openly sitting in every hotel) but many were in the public institutions like schools and hospitals and laboratories and hotel management, teaching and organizing and researching.
I liked how Miko spoke and carried herself, and her suits and her blond hair, especially when she had it up. Very good eye contact and control. She came across as about age 30 and I liked her in-command and decisive persona a little more in this movie than her personas in some of the others I have just checked out where she plays younger and more dependent. Typically such women (unless they were call girls) were remote and watchful rather than available and the one really inauthentic moment in the movie for me was when she and the Kilmer character lunged at one another the second time they met, in the hotel.
Thanks to the makers of the film for getting these things really right, and thanks to Miko for an elegant portrayal. Her early ballet maybe helped her a lot in poise and control of her movement. If she can find other parts like this one, she should keep going for years. I hope she looks.
And to me Kilmer played his character just fine. As far as I could see he was meant to be a somewhat bumbling do-good doctor so that the real action figure played by Miko could keep fishing him out.