Soldiers of Fortune

Movie Review: «Soldiers of Fortune».

English Title: Soldiers of Fortune.
Production: USA, 2012.
Release Date: 07.06.2012 (Kuwait), 03.08.2012 (USA).
Russian Distributor: KaroProkat (19.07.2012).
Official Website:
Genres: Action / Drama.
Director: Maxim Korostyshevsky.
Starring: Christian Slater, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames, Colm Meaney.
Running Time: 94 minutes.

Tour of Duty

The new Co-production effort brought alive by the US, Russian and Ukrainian filmmakers shows that the Action genre, actually, is much more complicated than it seems. Soldiers of Fortune film, Review of which is already here, might remind you of the old classics released in the late XX century, but in the modern era with titles such as The Dark Knight Rises and The Expendables 2 this is definitely not enough to succeed.

Russia faced a video rental boom in the late 1990s at the time, where many moviegoers started to adore legendary action heroes raised up from all over the world and came to fame through the US-based titles. These all are the stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallones. Life turned sharply careers of some of them, and Jean-Claude Van Damme even managed to appear in a cameo of a Russian comedy known as Rzhevskiy protiv Napoleona (2012). Now the time has come for the Soldiers of Fortune (2012) film borrowing a lot from more successful titles.

The current unifying element for the action celebrities is Sylvester Stallone himself, who invented The Expendables (2010-2012) dilogy being able to farm good box office figures out of it, while building a decent bridge between generations of old-timers and modern action heroes such as Jason Statham from the Safe (2011) flick or even Mark Wahlberg from the Contraband (2012) thriller. Sylvester Stallone proved himself as an experienced producer, who raised nearly 275 mln. USD with The Expendables getting ready to launch a sequel now in the mostly digital era, when 3D is attached to motion pictures more often, because it is fashionable, rather than to enhance a project’s value.

However, his colleague Jeff Most contributing a lot to the Co-production of Soldiers of Fortune film is also behind a rich legacy of the pure action titles. In the past he even worked with Sylvester Stallone making a movie The Specialist (1994). His portfolio also holds The Crow (1994) thriller, which was praised by a lot of critics all around the world. This time his partner was Richard Salvatore, who might be familiar to you, if you remember the action-comedy title My Mom’s New Boyfriend (2008).

On the Russian side they both were covered by Natalya Smirnova, who released the Russian boxing drama Kamennaya Bashka (2008). 90% of any film’s success relies on a good script. At the same time American producers are not very interested in working with Russian actors, except for naturalized stars such as Vladimir Mashkov of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). Even less chances hold the local scriptwriters, since from a commercial point of view overseas their work doesn’t look very attractive to be sold in the foreign markets. To perform well in the North America the actors must speak good English, and the storyline should be understandable by a wide range of typical moviegoers. It is believed that many US-based writers can do this well.

However, in the case of Soldiers of Fortune things turned the opposite. Firstly, its Russian director Maxim Korostyshevsky found a role for its leading actress and also his wife – Oksana Korostyshevskaya. Secondly, he has got a chance to work with several well-known Hollywood actors. Thirdly, the weakest part of the Co-production are the overseas scriptwriters. Alexandre Coscas in the past worked much as an assistant to various producers taking his part in making of Rambo (2008), The Expendables, and now working on the Kane & Lynch (2013) video game to film adaptation.

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Looking for an exotic voyage

Read on further to learn about the story and the characters of Soldiers of Fortune.