Review of Gorky Park (1983) by Bill S — 15 Mar 2015

William Hurt stars as a bilingual Russian police detective who is trying to uncover the secret to speaking English without a Russian accent. As his english vocabulary increases, his speech seems to alternate impressively from one which yet has a glimmer of russian texture, to perfect russian proof english. There are times when you'd scarcely believe he had ever spoken russian to begin with! This is however short lived.

We are rooting for Detective Renko to discover the truth of accentless english, and through the many twists and turns in his adventure with language skill development, we almost see his accent vanish altogether. Sadly, he ultimately loses his linguistic battle and we find ourselves just as aggravated as Renko, as he still..has a slight accent. Not all is lost, there is hope, while we are left with the impression that many of his comrades are also learning english, and are escaping the confines of their soviet prison where everyone speaks with permanent russian accents (if they speak english at all!). We try not to think too hard about those poor souls...it's sad.