Editor’s note: This review is best enjoyed while listening to “Plopii Impari,” a Romanian disco song featured in “Comrade Detective.”
While Americans may celebrate Labor Day with backyard BBQs and taking advantage of sales on American-made cars, “Comrade Detective” is here to remind you of the holiday’s more ideological roots.
“Comrade Detective,” a new Amazon Original Series, is supposedly found footage of a hard-nosed detective show which ran in communist Romania during the 1980s in the Cold War. The show is presented to an American audience, dubbed by famous Hollywood actors, because American audiences are supposedly averse to reading subtitles. The show follows a mismatched pair of detectives (is there any other kind in television?) trying to solve the murder of one of their colleagues.
Channing Tatum dubs Gregor Anghel (Florin Piersic Jr.), the hard-drinking streetwise city detective who witnessed his partner Nikita murdered by a mysterious man in a Ronald Reagan mask. By contrast, Joseph Gordon-Levitt provides the voice for Isoif Baciu (Corneliu Ulici), a childhood friend of Nikita and a small-town detective who comes to Bucharest to avenge Nikita’s death. To round out the necessary detective film stereotypes, Nick Offerman lends his talent to the gruff, take-no-nonsense police captain only known as “the Captain.”
The brilliance of “Comrade Detective” isn’t simply its communization of the well-worn buddy cop genre, but how it combines that genre with elements of a political thriller and satire.
Like any well-done satire, the show not only pokes fun at the subject, but understands what makes the genre fun to begin with. In this respect, “Comrade Detective” absolutely nails what makes buddy cop shows and movies so excellent, putting two opposing personalities together and watching them spark.
What Piersic and Baciu do is nothing short of astounding. The chemistry and contrast they offer is both hilarious and heartfelt, even though the audience never hears their voices. This is made all the better by the truly outstanding writing, which never fails to insert the perfect piece of ridiculous Soviet propaganda at exactly the right time.
Whether it’s the obese Americans in the background of the United States embassy eating a gigantic pile of hamburgers, or the competitive chess constantly on TV at Romanian bars, these little gags make the show so special.
Of course, that’s not to say the larger jokes aren’t downright hysterical. When a Monopoly game discovered in a suspect’s car is seen as a clue, the detectives struggle to understand the rules of the game. When they finally learn how to play from Gregor’s parents (who are in prison since young Gregor informed on them to the secret police for becoming too westernized), the detectives are horrified. One of the detectives horrifically exclaims after learning the rules, “You’re telling me that the purpose of this game is to drive your fellow citizens into poverty so that you may get rich?”
Offerman also provides some inspired lines playing the polar opposite of Ron Swanson from “Parks and Recreation.” One of his most inspired lines comes after a suspect commits suicide: “Nobody has the right to take their own life — only the state has the right to do that.”
The show’s true achievement isn’t only that it manages to pull off this ridiculous, original concept, but that the ridiculous concept is relevant to today’s society.
In an age of “fake news,” “Comrade Detective” offers a look at what propaganda during the Cold War looked like. For example, when the detectives are considering whether the murder of Nikita’s partner was an inside job, Gregor replies, “Impossible! There is no such thing as a corrupt cop in Bucharest!”
Many on the political right have flocked to “Comrade Detective” as an indictment of communism. While the show certainly brings to light many of the horrors of communism (“Why do we torture people? Because it works,” says one of the detectives) that narrow interpretation misses the point.
What’s being satirized here isn’t just communism, it’s blind ideological belief in some worldview. While it’s easy to laugh at a local’s belief that Romania really does have the best healthcare system in the world (though their healthcare system just seems to be a nurse feeding the patients soup), it equally pokes fun at those who believe the same about America.
If the fanatic in the Reagan mask wasn’t obvious enough, the ultimate goal of the evil mastermind is to make Romania the 51st state of America. He lectures about the land of possibility where a man can put his name on a skyscraper in bright gold letters and the wonders of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. But this blind faith and explanation of his entire plan to the detectives (which of course gives them time to stop him), ultimately costs the villain both of his hands, leaving him with two invisible hands.
In this hyper-charged political climate, it’s easy to descend into dogmatic tribalism and believe the worst stereotypes about our political opponents, the same way Cold War communists believed all Americans were fat and ate nothing but hamburgers. What’s harder to do is see the humanity in everyone, no matter their political beliefs.
So if you feel disheartened by the capitalism that has consumed Labor Day, or are just looking for a good laugh, “Comrade Detective” is the show for you.
Eric Peterson is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a native of Illinois and all-around nerd. His love of film probably comes from the fact that “Groundhog Day” was filmed in his hometown, which he heard about over and over and over again.
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