I’ve always though HFRO’s switch from Russian with subtitles to unaccented (American) English, in between sentences, was brilliant on several levels. I wish all movies handled foreign languages so well. (Having them speak accented English is the worst.)
Ha! You live up to your name AGAIN, NoClueBoy. It wasn’t Ramius reading from the bible, it was the ill-fated political officer, Putin.
Haven’t seen it since it came out, was going from memory.
Putin slipped and fell. It wasn’t a murder! Really!
It’s not likes it’s Star Trek, ya know! 
This one doesn’t seem to have been answered adequately, so I’ll take a stab at it. I’m going from memory, here, so may get some minor details wrong.
None. It’s just a side effect of the way the class was designed. It’s two Delta class pressure hulls side by side, with an outer hull around them. They did as little redesign of the Delta hulls as possible so the missile tubes are in the same place as the original design. Then they needed a third, smaller pressure hull for the control center, but it was too big to go in the traditional (forward of the missiles) location. So they slapped it on the back over the reactor/engine areas of the two Delta hulls.
Fair enough, but I had heard the phrase spoken or referenced by various people, one of whom was my Russian language professor reacting to a foul innuendo by a German professor, “Oh, please. I may be Russian, but I’m not a Soviet.”
—G!
One of my favorite movies, flaws be damned!
I’ve always wondered if Red October was the first film to do this language ‘switch’ trick. Obviously *Judgement at Nuremberg *(which I haven’t seen) predates it! From the above description it sounds as though October lifted its exact technique (zooming in for the switch). Although I generally prefer having them speak the actual language I understand that subtitles are very unpopular (and do get tiresome). I thought Red October’s method was the best of both worlds. BTW, it was also during this scene that Ramius’ wife’s fate is alluded too (the Political Officer says something like, “…her death was, most unfortunate”).
For war films in which the two sides never meet, it’s seems like they shouldn’t bother with different languages. I recently watched Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway, two films made around the same time. Tora![sup]3[/sup] spoke Japanese with subtitles while *Midway *just spoke (unaccented) English all round, and I found it worked better this way.
About the only film I can think of that seemed to really work using the ‘English dialog w/foreign accent’ thing is Schindler’s List. Actual language or just an accent, to an American ear German does a Nazi make!
I like that the exact word where they make the switch to English is “Armegeddon.” Which is handy since it’s the same in both languages.
There’s only one thing that annoys me in this flick. At one point, Stellan Skarsgaard is smoking on his bridge (Big No-No on a sub) and he puts the cig out by throwing it on the deck and stepping on it.
Also, it’s a shame that Alec Baldwin pissed off the producers so much that they went with Harrison Ford later. Alec was way better in the role of Jack Ryan.
Fair enough. Can I ask what era that comment was made? Also speaks to different audiences and different assumptions about the use of the word “Soviet”.
Well, non-Russian accented English, anyway. Interesting observation that Connery has a Scottish accent on his English, and Ramius as a Lithuanian might have an accent on his Russian. I hadn’t considered that angle.
Not really. Prior to the big anti-smoking push, the only time you couldn’t smoke on a diesel boat was when it was underwater, because then you’re using up O[sub]2[/sub], and producing CO[sub]2[/sub] and CO. If you were on the surface, you weren’t causing any more problems than you would on a surface ship. On a nuke sub, even underwater, you’re only using and producing the very things the environmental equipment is made to deal with, anyway.
My brother-in-law was on both, when the USN still had diesel boats, and he smoked. It was only on the diesels, when they were underwater, that it was restricted. There were no restrictions on the nuke boats. On the diesels, they had a signal light (the ‘smoking lamp’) in each compartment that indicated when it was or wasn’t permitted. It was only with the Navy-wide anti-smoking campaign (which was just starting when he got out) that it started to be a ‘Big No-No on a sub’, but it was becoming a ‘Big No-No’ everywhere, at that time.
It would hardly be a surprise at all if the Soviet navy never restricted it on nuke boats, and I’d want to see a cite that it ever was restricted, if you want to insist on that ‘Big No-No’ claim.
It’s very common to have a smoke in the bridge. I’ve had many captains and officers of the deck smoke a cigar while “enjoying the moment”.
Apparently I’m misinformed on the smoking ban. But putting it out on the floor? That’s pretty low-class for a sub commander.
Picking up the butts is what enlisted ‘deck-apes’ are for.
They have to clean the screen doors, too.
A submarine where Deck Apes evolved from Soviets?
Get your stinkin fags out of my face you damn dirty Ruskies!
There was a British TV show, a comedy, set in a small French town dufing World War II. The characters all speak English with exaggerated accents in French (the townspeople), German (the occupying forces) and English (a couple of downed British airmen kept hidden in the cafe). And no one can understand each other if they’re using a different accent. There are even scenes where someone translates between English-with-a-French-accent into English-with-an-English-accent. It’s completely silly. But on that show, it worked.
That’s one thing I was always curious about in the movie. The American military/intelligence folks are scared of the Red October because they describe it as a first-strike weapon. I always thought ballistic missile submarines were intended more for retaliation/deterrence. Land-based missiles are at known locations; if a first strike took them all out we would have nothing to fire back. Submarines are hidden and would survive the first strike.
So is the description of Red October as a first-strike weapon realistic? Is the missile guidance programmed so that a nearby target (as with RO close to the U.S. East Coast) would have a lower trajectory and very short flight time, or would the missile go just as high before coming down a few hundred miles away? And would those few minutes really make a difference in the whole MAD/strategic plans of the times? Sure, the missile may reach Washington sooner, but it’s not like we won’t know who shot it. We’ll retaliate just as strongly if the missile came from just off-shore as if it was from halfway around the world.
That brings up another problem I had with the movie. The other reason the U.S. is scared of the Red October is its silent drive. But the sonar operator on the Dallas is able to isolate the sound of it after the automated analysis equipment fails. He speeds up the recording to prove to the captain that it’s a mechanical sound. The most valuable thing in the movie is that recording. They should be doing everything they can to get that information back to the Navy so it can be sent out to the rest of their attack subs. If they do that, RO becomes trackable just like any other boat. But no one seems to think that’s of much importance, and they’re still desperate to capture the Red October intact.
The two were intrinsically related. The combination of a huge Typhoon-class boomer with the addition of “A nearly silent propulsion system” would make it incredibly effective for a ‘hide right off the Wash DC coast’, first-strike, ‘decapitation’ type attack. As is shown in the film (and even more in the book) US and Soviet SSNs and SSBNs shadowed each other constantly. Still do. So the sudden deployment of a nearly untrackable Soviet boomer with a massive launch payload would be a very provocative act. The film takes great liberties with Jonesie’s discovery of its sound, and because the film also has to compress everything into a ***much ***shorter time frame than the book that’s something you just have to gloss over.
I’ve read the book, although it’s been a long time ago, now. But regardless of how much the events are compressed in the movie, as soon as Jonesie figures out how to track the Red October, it becomes just like any other missile sub, as long as he gets that information to the rest of the fleet. Now, I’m sure Ryan, and the rest of the U.S. sub community, would still like to get their hands on the RO and examine it, but it becomes a lot less urgent once its largest advantage has been lost. But that point is never mentioned in the movie (or the book either, as I recall).
Sssshhhhh…
It’s in the script. Go with it!
‘Willing suspension of disbelief’, and all, you know. Now pick up all those butts off the deck, while I smoke this cigarette, deck-ape! If you do a good job, I’ll let you have a smoke, too. Just as long as you pick up your butts, of course.