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Review

Filmed in 1994 under the title Peshavar Waltz, this Russian film may have originally been a somewhat intelligent war film (winning Best Director honors at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival), but is undermined by a horrendous English dubbing and sound mix courtesy of the film's U.S. distributor. Because this home release version is so bad it is difficult to know when the faults rest on the shoulders of the original film. It's a shame because the film admirably tackles the rarely explored terrain of the Soviet-Afghanistan war. The story is narrated and told from the point-of-view of an American journalist, Charlie Palmer, who enters a Pakistani POW camp to interview Russian prisoners. The mistreated Russian prisoners revolt and take Palmer and an accompanying American doctor hostage. The Americans are forced to become participants in the revolt when the Russians barricade themselves in an underground "bunker" and it becomes apparent that all parties (Pakistani, United States, and Soviet) would just as soon prefer them dead to avoid controversy. The obvious low budget of the film doesn't help the production design, although it arguably lends a gritty documentary feel to it. The editing is at times confusing (or just bad) and the ending is predictable and of the oft-used "horrors-of-war" cliché variety. (Dubbed)