Russian-American Relations: Is Vlad Stealing from Yul?

For your amusement, indulge, when you have a moment, in this highlighted video -- Vladimir Putin es James Bond! which illustrates Mr. Putin's "I walk-the-walk" -- and compare its Vlad swaggering "walk-the-walk" to the brilliant Siberian-born Hollywood actor Yul Brynner's "way-of-walking" in the blockbuster film Magnificent Seven (1960) -- Brynner being a gifted performer who survived, and thrived, as an Russian exile in Paris and California, escaping from the Bolshevik "revolution."

Aren't these ideologically opposite persons -- Putin and Brynner -- walking in the same way? That's the question from this (aspiring) all-American blogger.

(Regrettably, Yul's idiosyncratic, to some, way-of-walking is illustrated only in a few moments in the chosen clip for this blog. Putin's walk-the-walk is more readily available on the internet).

But hey, let's get get serious! We've all seen Magnificent Seven on DVD! No excuse not to talk about the Yul walk!

Haven't some of us admired the memorable-as-sheer-entertainment close-to-high-art film (despite its ear-busting music), "The Magnificent Seven," noting with reserved approval, as red-blooded 'Merikans (with, granted, slight Puritan discomfort), that Yul's hip-moving way-of-walking is, well, not quite all-American.

Memo from Vlad to Yul: I love the way you move 'em hips, Yul!

But ... Political question: Is demon all-macho Russian xenophobic Vlad imitating seeking-freedom emigre cosmopolitan artist Yul?

And: cultural differences: Is Yul's fantastic performance, in the "Magnificent Seven," just a "Russian-way-of-walking" issue?

But then, as someone close to Yul once told me, when a Russian sees "the 7," he says "only a Russian can play a Western."

More "important': is this blog entry just reflecting a kind of "models on walk-ways" universal phenomenon, beyond Russian-American relations, such relations being, in our "non-hegemonic" twenty-first century world, a relic of the Cold War?

As we increasingly say in now dual-language America, "Quien Sabe"?

Image from