Film Description: In this 1988 American film directed by Walter Hill, a Soviet cop (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives in Chicago, where he reluctantly teams up with an American detective to find a Russian drug dealer who killed both their partners. Importantly, this film, while still depicting the Soviet cop as an emotionless stoic figure verging on the robotic, also depicts an act of American-Soviet cooperation as they work together to find their man.
The clip to the left shows the Soviet cop’s fight against drugs in the Soviet Union. This specific scene has received a large amount of fame, or notoriety, in the post-Soviet countries, where it is popular because, in large part, the actors’ Russian accents are so bad. One particularly popular moment is when a drug dealer asks what proof does the Soviet cop have. He says “Kakie vashie dokazatelstva?” This is an incredibly awkward turn of phrase. He should have said “Kakie u vac dokazatelstva ?” This would have been the correct way to ask the question in Russian, but then this clip would not be as popular today in Russian-speaking countries.