Comrades in Arms Reviews

An insipid gung-ho actioner, COMRADES IN ARMS posits Lance Henriksen as CIA chieftain Rob Reen, who orders his crack, undercover military terrorist squad, led by loose-cannon warrior Captain Frank White (John Christian), to eradicate powerful Third World drug trafficker Khaleel (John Weiner). After a nighttime raid fails, White learns Khaleel has set his sights on the "vast untapped marketplace" of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where the "decentralizing governments are weak" and they can take advantage of the new class of "private capitalists" for street operations. Enter the Russians, led by General Rada (Lyle Alzado), who send their crack military unit, led by Colonel Kotchev (Steven Kaman) to participate in the maneuvers to get rid of Khaleel, whose drug cartels represent, to them, the "world's new third superpower." However, due to the bickering between the Americans and the Russians, the next raid on Khaleel, at his Colombia stronghold, also fails. The furious Reen indicates White will be the scapegoat, so he and his remaining men return to Moscow with Kotchev, who is similarly threatened by Rada, where the pair gain some grudging respect for each other and join forces for a final mission against Khaleel, set in a deserted cavernous Prague factory. As dumb as its titular acronym, COMRADES IN ARMS strains to update its WWII-type formula (Kotchev blusters about the Americans' "pathetic imperialist war in Iraq"), and the scrambled plot makes little sense, falling back on hoary cliches like White's vodka-drinking bout and sexual fling with Russian soldier Natasha (Dierdre Coleman); White's veteran Viet Nam War buddy "Sergeant Stomper" (Phillip Stimpson), too wounded to evacuate, suicidally staying behind, propped against a tree with his M16, to delay Khaleel's pursuit of the fleeing good guys; and, of course, the dying Khaleel's final words to White and Kotchev: "I'll see you in hell!" To make matters worse, the screenplay also features just plain eye-opening weirdness, such as Khaleel's beautiful girlfriend Anka (Lorna Courtney) infiltrating the Washington, D.C., CIA headquarters by killing a single guard and spraying Reen's top-secret meeting with automatic fire. Director J. Christian Ingvordsen, who also co-wrote and co-produced, fails to enliven any of this material. The expository scenes are static and the action scenes are confusing, often composed of men jumping into the frame to fire their state-of-the-art weaponry at the camera. The nighttime combat sequences, photographed by Steven Kaman (who also plays Kotchev and edited and co-wrote) do have an odd, ironic physical beauty all on their own which has nothing to do with the plot. The movie's low budget necessitated the use of stock footage to stand in for the picture's worldwide locales, which adds further chaos--most of the movie was shot in Canada. The acting is barely adequate, although Weiner is fine as the insane, messianic sociopath Khaleel. Former pro football player and second-billed Alzado appears in only two scenes (one of them in long shot), for a combined total of about two minutes' screen time. The film screened at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival market and was released in the US direct-to-video. (Violence, profanity.)