White Nights (1985)

'White Nights' is part dance movie, part thriller, this odd combination seems to have come about from a desire to make a movie featuring both Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. Baryshnikov plays basically a version of himself, a Russian ballet star who defects to the west, only in this movie while on tour his plane is forced to make an emergency landing in the Soviet Union, the government figures out who he is an decides to force him back on the Russian dance scene. To 'babysit' him they bring in Hines, an American defector from the Vietnam War who is a talented tap dancer. Hines has married his Russian translator Isabella Rossellini and KGB agents Jerzy Skolimowski's efforts to use her as leverage to make Hines keep Baryshnikov in lines backfires, bringing the two expats together instead of apart. John Glover and Geraldine Page also appear, as well as director Taylor Hackford's future wife Helen Mirren, playing the part of Baryshnikov's ex-lover. Pre-Glasnot using Finland to substitute as Russia this is better then I thought it would be, though its hard now knowing the fate of the Soviet Union to avoid the temptation of thinking some characters may just want to try to and wait things out, they had no idea the communist government would be gone in less then a decade. ***