Paper Soldier (2009, Dir: Alexey German Jr.)

Can you remember watching films when you were a kid, and you had the horrible feeling that you were much too young to be watching them? I’m not talking about the uncomfortable feeling on Boxing Day, when you’re sat between your parents watching Sean Connery get off with some girl in You Only Live Twice. That’s pretty bad, but I’m talking more about films that go way over your head, on a completely intellectual level.

At the age of 6 or 7, I once begged my Grandmother to take me to see a film whilst we were on holiday in some English seaside town. I can’t remember why I wanted to see the film in question – which I can’t remember enough details about to investigate further – but I imagine that at some point I had seen the trailer for it and it looked exciting. I even remember my Grandmother raising her eyebrows and asking me again and again if I was really sure I wanted to see it.

Now the film in question was, I believe, American – or possibly British. It involved a young Russian man, who had a horrible accident on an airplane. For some reason, he fell on the floor, the plane lurched forward and he was hit full-on by a heavily-laden drinks trolley. He recuperated, and the main action in the film then took place whereby the Russian man assisted by a black man, did something which involved climbing from window to window between two high buildings.

Now if that sounds like the drunken recollection of a bad dream, then just try and remember what it was like for me at the time – I’m sure my Grandmother unwittingly smuggled me in to see an 18-certificate film. The subject matter of the film was completely adult-oriented, with slightly more violent action sequences that what I was used to at the time. I even remember the bravado I employed, leaving the cinema with my questioning Grandmother, trying to pass off that not only did I understand the film completely, but that I quite enjoyed it even though it wasn’t as funny as the James Bond films.

So, that film - whatever it was called – was my first foray into a world of cinema I wasn’t ready for. There I was, at the age of 6 or 7, watching an 18-certificate film. I was therefore trying to comprehend a film aimed at somebody three times my age.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and I’m sitting in a cinema in a seaside town in New Zealand (well, Auckland is near the sea) and I’m watching Paper Soldier (which coincidentally is Russian). I’m now 31, and watching a film that is surely aimed at somebody three times my age.

Yes, to understand Paper Soldier you have to be 93 years old; and to enjoy it you have to be senile.