Monday 29 August 2011

Best Actor 1966: Alan Arkin in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

Alan Arkin received his second Oscar nomination for portraying Lt. Rozanov in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming tells the story of a Soviet Submarine accidentally landing on a New England Island town, chaos ensues.

Alan Arkin plays one of the Russians in the odd situation. This is a performance that is rather hard to say all that much about because Arkin just does very little in this film.It is not due to a lack of screen time, but rather just the amount of what his character actually does is incredibly little. The main point of his character is he is one of the few level headed characters in the film as everyone else goes crazy.

All that Arkin does is basically run around say how he is looking for a boat to get the submarine out, as well as react in disbelief at the various crazy actions of the town. Arkin is perfectly fine in the role I suppose, his accent is entirely natural enough. His reactions to the various are fine, and slightly humorous I suppose, but not particularly funny still.

There is very little total that can be said about Arkin otherwise than he is fine with the small amounts of requirements in the part, but at the same there is nothing really required of him on a whole. I also do not really think he could have pulled more out of the part than he does, he really is about as good as he could be with so little material to deal with. Arkin is entirely fine, but this nomination really makes no sense.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still so many nominees I need to catch up on...

RatedRStar said...

Whenever I see Alan Arkin in this film I always think Super Mario Bros lol =D

dshultz said...

^ Ha ha ha ha, It's a-me, MARIO!!!!!

RatedRStar said...

hahahaha lmao thts all im ever gonna think now whenever alan arkins name is mentioned =D lol

dinasztie said...

I saw a short scene of this movie but I don't really remember. :D

joe burns said...

Do you like him as an actor in general?

Louis Morgan said...

I really have not seen enough of him to say for sure.

JamDenTel said...

Having just watched this film, I actually find Arkin's performance quite enjoyable (he and Paul Ford are easily the best performances in the whole film); I quite like Arkin, and find he underplays the role in a highly enjoyable manner (in some ways, it anticipates his Yossarian in the underrated CATCH-22).

deusxmacxdeux said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
deusxmacxdeux said...

better late than never, i guess, but it was arkin's FIRST academy nom. his second was for his performance in "the heart is a lonely hunter," for which he was nominated in '68.

deusxmacxdeux said...

this still sucks grammar but i'm not deleting and editing and reposting again. lol. besides, i'm just talking to myself, so who tf cares?

deusxmacxdeux said...

waitaminit, i just read your review. "This is a performance that is rather hard to say all that much about because Arkin just does very little in this film." are you kidding me? he carries the entire FILM. speaking very little english -- his native language -- he carries the whole damn film, from the beginning, when he's losing it because his idiot captain is putting his sub in danger of running aground, but he's trying to keep it lowkey because the captain will freak out and take it out on the crew otherwise, to the end, when he blows a kiss to his american friends.

how old were you when you first watched the film? if you were in your teens, go back and watch it again. look for subtlety.