Oded Fehr | Through the Shattered Lens

I was going to take a short break from reviewing the many films of Eric Roberts but then I came across 2021’s Red Prophecies on Tubi.

Actually, did I just say 2021? Coming up with a date for this film is actually a little bit more complicated than that. This film was apparently actually filmed in 2014 but it sat on the shelf for a while. The version that was released has a prologue and an epilogue that were obviously filmed in 2020. Russian actor Alexander Nevsky appears in both scenes, talking about his plans for manipulating the upcoming U.S. elections. It’s one of those scenes that is meant to be chilling but instead just reminds the viewer of how ludicrously melodramatic and performative most political discourse has been since 2017.

The majority of the film features Eric Roberts as John Payne, an American reporter who moves to Russia and becomes famous for his ability to predict what’s going to happen in Russian politics. For instance, Payne writes that an opposition leader is going to be arrested and he is! Payne gets his information from “The Oracle,” an anonymous source who sends him emails that John, who is supposed to be a veteran reporter, types up without question. Casper Van Dien, who is playing some sort of Russian intelligence agent, tries to figure out where Payne is getting his information from. Stephen Baldwin shows up as a shady Russian politician. Michael Madsen plays a UN official who Payne suspects is actually corrupt. (A corrupt UN official is probably the most plausible of the film’s plot points.) It’s all a part of a huge plot to destabilize both Russia and the United States. How it all links together is anyone’s guess. The story is not easy to follow, which is probably why the film sat on a shelf for seven years until someone realized that there was a market for international conspiracy films in the United States.

There’s a lot of familiar faces in this movie. We don’t actually hear their voices in the film because apparently, it would have cost too much money to have them come back to do ADR. So, instead, we get one person trying to sound like a dozen different people. Eric Roberts, Stephen Baldwin, and Michael Madsen all have very distinctive voices so when they all sound like a 20-something using autotune, you’re going to notice.

This was a messy film. I’m not really sure if it was mean to be pro-Russian or anti-Russian. The film takes place in Russia and it deals with people being oppressed and opposition leaders being murdered by the government but one name this is never mentioned is the name of Vladimer Putin. Is this movie supposed to be taking place in the real world or an alternate world? I was never quite sure. Several of the characters could have easily been cut from the film and again, buying the film’s story means accepting that a famously hard-boiled reporter would automatically trust an email sent to him by someone calling themselves The Oracle. It’s nice to see the cream of the B-movie, straight-to-video crop all in one film together but otherwise, Red Prophecies doesn’t add up to much.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Dreamer is based on the true story of a horse that did something that few horses have managed to do. It broke a bone but it still managed to make a comeback as a racehorse.

I love horses, which is why I’m not a fan of horseracing. I find horseracing to be cruel. The horses, which have an innate need to follow the orders of whoever is riding it, will literally run themselves to death to try to keep their jockeys happy. When you add that many racehorses are kept in deplorable conditions and that, with insurance, they are often worth more dead than alive, you have a sport that brings out the worst in a lot of people. Horses are wonderful animals because they are so loyal. That loyalty deserves better than being shot because they broke a leg due to their trainer’s negligence.

Given how I feel about horseracing, I’m amazed that I liked Dreamer when I saw it in the theaters and I was surprised that I still liked it when I watched it this weekend. I guess it’s because the horse in Dreamer is not euthanized. She would have been euthanized if not for the fact that her trainer (Kurt Russell) brought his daughter (Dakota Fanning) to work with him that day. Russell loses his job but he does gain a horse. After the horse recovers from its injury, Russell hopes to breed the horse. It turn out that the horse cannot have a foal but it can still race. With Russell and Fanning’s help, the horse returns to competition and shows up everyone who gave up on her. Russell and Fanning refuse to give up on the horse and the horse doesn’t give up on herself. Along the way, Russell and Fanning finally spend time together as father and daughter and Russell reconnects with his wife, Elisabeth Shue, and his father, Kris Kristofferson. Everyone involved gives a good job. The movie may be predictable but there aren’t any false notes in any of the performances. I not only wanted the horse to get better but I wanted the family to grow closer and I was happy when both those things happened.

Dreamer is a good family movie. If only every trainer was as kind and willing to admit his mistakes as Kurt Russell is in this film. There’s nothing surprising about Dreamer but it’s still a movie that makes me cheer. It makes me cheer in a way that a real horse race never would.