Solo Voyage
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''The Detached Mission'' sometimes translated as ''Solo Voyage'' or ''Solo Journey'' (russian: Одиночное плавание,
translit. Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
 ''Odinochnoye plavanie'') and also known as ''The Russian Hero'' is a 1985 Soviet military action film, directed by Mikhail Tumanishvili. In official U.S. Navy parlance, the term "одиночное плавание" corresponds to "independent steaming".


Plot

The movie is set during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. A television news journalist aboard the American aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz explains the scenario of current fleet exercise of the U.S. Navy in the central Pacific Ocean. During a
live broadcast A live broadcast, also called a live transmission, generally refers to various types of media that are broadcast without a significant delay. The most common seen media example of the live transmission is a news program or a news broadcasting. Oth ...
from the bridge of the Nimitz, the correspondent points out a fleet of "Russian" (Soviet) warships on the horizon commanded by Vice Admiral Chernov. At the same time, a plainclothed man, later identified as a
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
operative, meets U.S. Army Major Jack Hessalt, a crazed Vietnam War veteran, who is suffering wartime flashbacks and seems ready to dispatch on his own private crusade against the Soviets. The CIA man employs Hessalt to gain control over the U.S. missile facility in the Central Pacific and launch a false flag attack on a third-party ocean liner, sink it, and make it look like the Soviets have done that. While the American and Soviet ships track each other in the Pacific, a Soviet frigate with a detachment of Soviet Naval Infantry aboard, under command of Major Shatokhin, is 1,500 miles to the south and prepares to return to their home base from a detached mission (independent steaming exercise). After arriving at the U.S. military base, Hessalt receives a secret order to launch a missile with a conventional warhead at a passenger cruise ship. A group of CIA and military officers goes golfing together with influential American military industrialists and plans this operation as a part of conspiracy to frame the Soviet Navy with the sinking of a civilian liner. The aim of the operation is to derail an upcoming Soviet-American disarmament summit in order to assure continued profitability of certain U.S. defense contractors. After Hessalt finds out that he and his men are actually expendables most likely to be assassinated immediately after the completion of their mission, he goes ballistic and takes full control of the base, arming a
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
with a nuclear warhead instead of conventional one, and prepares to strike the Soviet squadron so he and his henchmen could escape from the island and disappear among the ensuing chaos. Meanwhile, an American hipster-lookalike couple, local airline pilot and his wife, spends honeymoon on the island near the missile base, Hessalt orders his men to eliminate the unnecessary witnesses. Woman has been killed, but the man managed to escape, shortly thereafter teams up with the Soviets to punish the villains. After the Soviet Chief of Naval Staff found out that Hessalt acts on his own, he orders Major Shatokhin and his detachment to proceed upon a search and destroy mission, find and neutralize the missile launch site. The Soviets face the difficult task to prevent possible World War III.


Significance

''The Detached Mission'' was filmed and released shortly after the second '' Rambo'' installment was released, and according to many observers was the Soviet Union's response to that film. According to the lead actor,
Mikhail Nozhkin Mikhail Ivanovich Nozhkin (russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Но́жкин; born January 19, 1937, Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian film and theater actor, poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe t ...
, this was the last anti-American Soviet movie filmed before the Soviet leadership ordered an end to anything that might irritate the U.S. Government. In a 2006 interview, Nozhkin said,
...they didn't let us film, Gorbachev was already in power, which means chaos had started. A movie on a military theme, and we couldn't get arms, they say, "Here's a Makarov pistol, that's it." They wouldn't give us anything in order to avoid offending the overseas "friends": we are all for peace and so on.


References


External links

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Rusfilm 2003 program notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Detached Mission 1985 in the Soviet Union 1985 films Cold War films Mosfilm films Films about the United States Navy Films directed by Mikhail Tumanishvili Soviet action films 1985 action films Films about post-traumatic stress disorder