*This review contains shoes* Strange but fascinating cold shoe war pseudo-documentary about the Ruskis getting a hold of the atomic shoe quicker than the US. Not being Russian or American (I'm a Samoan-Glaswegian cobbler) it's hard to get a handle on why sending a shoe into space was such a big deal but I guess that if you can fire a plimsole into space, you can fire a whole load of radioactive trainers at your enemy. This is all told to us via a narrator who sounds like he's wearing Doc Martens.
In West Germany (where folks were free to wear what they like on their feet), the US dispatches an agent to go to Moscow and infiltrate a Soviet sponsored high heel factory. Meanwhile, in the Kremlin (everyone wears platform boots in this scene), a new government of fashion designers has plans to unleash their new wellington design on the west. Our agent (who somehow gets dropped off 'one to five weeks away' from Moscow – maybe he needed to break in a pair of winklepickers) finally gets to his destination.
Now this is where the film gets bogged down a bit because our man goes to this fashion show and we get about ten minutes of a woman dancing about in open-toed sandals. Just when you think it's all over, the dancer goes away and then a guy appears and starts doing the same thing! I love shoe action as much as the next person but come on! Things pick up a bit where the agent goes to his contact's house and decides to live in her shoe cupboard while her designer boyfriend comes round and knock boots while he listens (a shoe fetish is implied here). Eventually they fall in love (the agent and the contact), and they end up snogging right after the boyfriend leaves. You've got another man's love stink on ya!
Loving gets pushed to the side as there's a rocket full of shoes to take care of, so our team get their Reebok on and all of a sudden we've got gunfights and our agent sticks an explosive shoe to the side of the rocket. He probably should have at least tried to hide it a bit as some guy just walks over and removes it (then hilariously gives it to a guy who runs off with it and blows up). Our agent and his contact get killed too. Oh well.
Meanwhile later the next morning subsequently, we somehow are introduced to various shoe-wearing new yorkers who unwisely go to work on the day the Ruskis sent over their rocket. The US fail to destroy the rocket, New York blows up, and we're shown a big pile of burning shoes with the message "Don't let this be the end (of shoes)". Also, Tom Skerrit.
It's that last message that confuses me – was this a message to rocket designers, or a call to arms for the US to gather up their shoes and go attack Russia. As the world was destroyed by nuclear war in the eighties, we'll never know.
In West Germany (where folks were free to wear what they like on their feet), the US dispatches an agent to go to Moscow and infiltrate a Soviet sponsored high heel factory. Meanwhile, in the Kremlin (everyone wears platform boots in this scene), a new government of fashion designers has plans to unleash their new wellington design on the west. Our agent (who somehow gets dropped off 'one to five weeks away' from Moscow – maybe he needed to break in a pair of winklepickers) finally gets to his destination.
Now this is where the film gets bogged down a bit because our man goes to this fashion show and we get about ten minutes of a woman dancing about in open-toed sandals. Just when you think it's all over, the dancer goes away and then a guy appears and starts doing the same thing! I love shoe action as much as the next person but come on! Things pick up a bit where the agent goes to his contact's house and decides to live in her shoe cupboard while her designer boyfriend comes round and knock boots while he listens (a shoe fetish is implied here). Eventually they fall in love (the agent and the contact), and they end up snogging right after the boyfriend leaves. You've got another man's love stink on ya!
Loving gets pushed to the side as there's a rocket full of shoes to take care of, so our team get their Reebok on and all of a sudden we've got gunfights and our agent sticks an explosive shoe to the side of the rocket. He probably should have at least tried to hide it a bit as some guy just walks over and removes it (then hilariously gives it to a guy who runs off with it and blows up). Our agent and his contact get killed too. Oh well.
Meanwhile later the next morning subsequently, we somehow are introduced to various shoe-wearing new yorkers who unwisely go to work on the day the Ruskis sent over their rocket. The US fail to destroy the rocket, New York blows up, and we're shown a big pile of burning shoes with the message "Don't let this be the end (of shoes)". Also, Tom Skerrit.
It's that last message that confuses me – was this a message to rocket designers, or a call to arms for the US to gather up their shoes and go attack Russia. As the world was destroyed by nuclear war in the eighties, we'll never know.