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Show Baryshnikov, Hines heat up Cold War with dancing feet in 'White Nights' Isabella Rossellini and Mikhail Baryshnikov make a daring escape from behind the Iron Curtain in "White Nights." - . 1 I'm')'! ' t y Ult It, Mt? and Robin Moench A Classic Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only White Nights Superstar Nikolai Rodchenko learned classical ballet in the world-famous world-famous Kirov Theater. Raymond Greenwood picked up tap on Harlem's sidewalks. While Rodchenko Rod-chenko pirouetted in the White House, Greenwood tapped out "Porgy and Bess" to an accordion band in Siberia. Mikhail Baryshnikov as the lionized lioniz-ed Russian ballet star and Gregory Hines as the American tap dancer, stifled in the tundra both are defectors defec-tors to one another's native lands. Can these two political outcasts, who perform in diverse dance traditions, tradi-tions, cooperate? Can the two men one black, one white be friends? In a story that, at 2 14 hours,, is draggy and slow but studded with segments of great dancing, you are not surprised to discover they can. The movie makes a point of telling us ballet dancers smoke, drink, have bad table manners and use four-letter four-letter words that aren't "plie." Baryshnikov has the courage to be obnoxious onscreen, squelching his cute, cuddly image. And Hines has the courage to play second fiddle to a man who probably is the world's greatest dancer. The odd alliance comes about when a plane carrying Rodchenko from one tour date to another crash-lands crash-lands at a secret Soviet military base in Siberia. The dancer, who defected to the U.S. eight years before, is a criminal in his homeland. A menacing KGB man, Chainko (played sneeringly by Jerzy Skolimowski), promises Rodchenko his old elitist's life in Leningrad if he'll dance in the Kirov again. Rodchenko's watchdog is Greenwood, Green-wood, who left the U.S. in protest of the Vietnam war. If he cooperates with Chainko, he and his Russian wife will have a better life. Rodchenko's former partner and lover (Helen Mirren) first refuses to help him escape to safety at the American consulate, then changes her mind, in a scene in the empty theater that is Baryshnikov's best dance sequence, angry, victorious "and Russian.'" i And Hines' best tap athletic and buoyant is in a rehearsal hall where he's carried away by a tape of - two in earlapped pilot's hats nosediving off a tall platform in a wingless plane the CO calls it "radical vertical impact simula-." simula-." tion." : ' ;- ' Chase reprises a lot of his familiar bits mugging and cribbing outrageously through a government exam, shouldering through a door with Aykroyd, making faces at a speaker who is turned away and pulling a straight face when the person per-son turns to him. Maybe we've seen him being fresh and slapstick too often. After nearly two hours, it wears thin. Aykroyd, as always, is controlled and believable as a language and computer whiz. . Donna Dixon as a physicianspy looks great in furs. And Steve Forrest For-rest is fanatically anti-Commie as the military head of the operation. John Landis directed the veteran cast through a high-techCold War plot that has become all too familiar. The movie is good fun, but maybe the Aykroyd-Chase reunion would have benefitted from a story that was a little out of the common run. . -RM :i on-rhythmic, on-rhythmic, rocking new American .'' music. f)t1'"1 It's unfair to judge the men's per-'11 formances by their dazzling dance , ability alone. But, with a movie about dancers, it's inevitable to dis- count the performers' skill at acting.1 Both Baryshnikov who in his pr6-!& fessional life as a dancer is silent on j, stage and Hines, a musical comedyc;S star who sings, also can act. More than a decade ago, , Baryshnikov himself defected from.(,j the Soviet Union to enjoy profes sional freedom in the West. For him, making this movie might have been E; a "what if?" nightmare tamed oi,i: celluloid. But he says the story, , while similar to his, is notq autobiographical and Rodchenko is f) not Baryshnikov. In a recent inter, ( view, he said that his dream is to return home. Then he added that, ironically, he probably lost his last chance to do that by making this movie. If another of his goals is to make his nark in films, he might have to take on a dramatic role that doesn't require quick feet. 1 Geraldine Page plays Rod-chenko's Rod-chenko's feisty promoter. Isabella .Rossellini is Darya ',' Greenwood's wile if you didn't already know she"'0 is the daughter of Ingrid Bergman, her mannerisms would recall her mother immediately. Taylor . ! i" i ' Hackford directed, and Twyla Tharp choreographed the dance sequences the, dancers themselves didn't im-proyise,;, im-proyise,;, RM 'Va Spies Like Us 0 When a couple of former cohorts 'from the glory days of "Saturday Night Live" reunite for a movie, you .naturally anticipate it will be a ,can't-miss. ")Spie$ Like Us," teaming Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in a comedy . .written? by a trio including Aykroyd, misses! A sneaky government agency handpicks a pair of bumbling lower-echelon lower-echelon employees for a special overseas mission. They are to penetrate Pakistan, slip over the ,bor,der into the Soviet Union and destroy a new IBM missle site they think. Actually, they're just a pair of dumb decoys whose purpose is to draw off enemy attention from the real spy team a pair of fake doctors doc-tors in the desert. Guess who end up as the heroes? The screenplay is reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy's adventures in the French Foreign Legion 50 years ago. Aykroyd and Chase bumble through basic training under the 'derisive eye of ra, 'no-nonsense top sergeant. Practice maneuvers include in-clude funny bits in a G-force simulator and a sight gag with the Now Showing At the Holiday Village Cinemas: WhiteNIghts ; '2Spies Like Us ' ' Target trtotyet'rated)'"v',?, - |