m10001 I never knew a historical document about a conflict- book, film, whatever, that was perfectly balanced, but I believe that this film is better than many on this score. I urge you to listen to the podcast of Irina Nistor's interview on the public radio program Fresh Air, which includes important details left out of the film and also recounts what happened immediately after the incidents in the film. I liked the music and the lighting, but they seemed derivative of the documentary The Thin Blue Line, which is also excellent and which I commend to your attention.

gavin6942 A documentary about the magic of film and the power it has to change lives.This is a strange film where the Romanian government sees the hidden messages in cartoon balloons and images of grocery stores, which obviously were never intended by the creators. This is both a commentary on political suppression, but also (inadvertently) a critique of artistic criticism. So many see so much in books and film that the creators clearly never meant.The focus of the film is on the subculture of people who watched VHS tapes smuggled in to Romania, giving them glimpses of Western culture (primarily American). It seems they were especially drawn to action films and the movies coming out of the Cannon Group. Exactly why this is, I do not know.But we also get to meet Irina Margareta Nistor, the woman who dubbed more than 3000 of these tapes. The translation of the swear words is pretty funny, and not completely isolated. Anyone who watches a movie in a foreign language they can understand will notice the subtitles are almost always a bit off.

MartinHafer I read a review here on IMDb by a Romanian and am am sure this person would be a much better judge of the central theme of this documentary. They felt that "Chuck Norris Vs. Communism" overstated its position that the illegal import of American 1980s videotapes into Romania served to introduce Western ideas into this communist dictatorship and this led to the fall of the government in 1989. While I agree this reviewer that this was overstated a bit, it surely had some impact on changing attitudes. However, the context of the time also must have had a lot to do with it as well...something never even mentioned in the film. In other words, communist bloc nations were throwing out their governments by refusing to work or do anything until their leaders resigned...and Romania was just part of that wave. So, I agree with tributarystu...but it's still well worth seeing.The film uses interviews and recreations to explain how Romanians smuggled in American films. Additionally, mostly one interpreter dubbed the movies (doing ALL the voices) and there was a cottage industry that was illegal but overlooked by various government officials. After all, they liked watching the films and there was some sort of payoff going on as well. It's all interesting and worth seeing...if a tad overstated.

tributarystu In spite of being born towards the end of the 80s, I recall several "Margareta Nistor movies", her trademark dubbing scarring my youth alongside the zombies of Return of the Living Dead. It's funny, particularly because her often inflection-less voice made the humor of the movie much harder to understand at the time. Then again, maybe that had more to do with me being less than a decade old myself and thinking I might be immune to the undead.At its heart, CNvsC is a film about the passion of movies. During communist Romania, in the especially dire last ten years of Ceausescu's reign, an illicit business venture involving the dubbing, copying and distributing of Western cinema spawned and spread like wildfire in what became a cultural landmark of the times. Rocky, Missing in Action, Once Upon a Time in America, Bloodsport, Dirty Dancing are just some of the many movies featured. Using current day interviews with both the protagonists of the movement (foremost Mrs. Nistor as the "localization" specialist, Mr. Zamfir as the ambivalent VHS peddler) and Romanian personalities, as well as laborious reenactments of key events, director Calugareanu portrays the dichotomous fear/love relationship of treading the anti-establishment line. At its best, the film is humorous and playful, insightful with a dark edge in exploring the oppressive machinations behind the scenes. While hyperbolizing, it sets itself up as a thoroughly enjoyable ode to a movement that played a part in empowering the Romanian people. But the causation is forced and based on weak evidence. The urge to make such a powerful claim and even the attempts of dramatizing certain events play against what CNvsC is really strong at: highlighting the cultural impact and the adventurous affairs surrounding a seemingly banal act of translation. What it fails to do is look beyond the immediate effects of the whole process and the romance of movies as an escape from the everyday. Questions like how the exposure to a fairly homogeneous body of films affected Romanians' world-view, especially given that most of the films were not quite paragons of Western film-making, is not tackled. Nor is the matter of how the practice of what essentially is piracy contributed to a certain cultural acceptance of digital duplication in decades to come, as seen across the Eastern block. At the screening, Nistor mentioned that she had met her counter-parts from Estonia or Russia, who were different to her only in that they were all men. So, while on the one hand the documentary works as a look into a pretty special phenomenon, it is frustrating that it avoids going deeper into either the social ramifications, or further exploring the more personal experiences of the likes of Mrs. Nistor to let the local interpretations take hold of an otherwise too descriptive approach - aimed to a more universal audience, with little knowledge of Romanian oddities.