With exuberant music and a healthy balance between historic footage and present-day interviews, Red Penguins tells a story that at first seems innocuous and buoyant but later reveals itself to be something deeply grotesque. Focusing on a failed partnership between American capitalists and post-Soviet Russians, this documentary is upsetting, though relevant, but it should be much more fascinating than it actually is

We begin with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Russia is in shambles. People are starving, the transition to capitalism is chaotic, and the USSR’s former national hockey team is selling tickets for the U.S. equivalent of six cents a head. On the premise that it would be a good move for American/Russian relations, and to make money, Howard Baldwin and Tom Ruta, co-owners of the Pittsburgh Penguins, form a partnership with the Russian team. They send Steven Warshaw, a young, exuberant businessman, to become their marketing man on the ground in Russia.

These Americans repeatedly emphasize that they were crazy, in it for the fun, barely thinking about consequences, and not understanding what they were getting into. The newly christened Red Penguins featured strippers as cheerleaders and bears (yes, real bears) serving drinks on the ice at their games. The growing success of this partnership led to the involvement of Disney, which used the team for the plot of a Mighty Ducks movie, and eventually to violence. It became clear that, unbeknownst to the Americans, the Russian mob was involved in the management and they were in over their heads. Many Russians associated with the team are violently murdered, and the Americans flee. 

As tension sparks yet again between the United States and Russia, it is indeed chilling to see what became of this failed union 30 years ago. What makes the film so profoundly frustrating is that the American interviewees (Baldwin, Ruta, and, most of all, Warshaw) lack the capacity for unguarded reflection. It is obvious to viewers that they failed to acknowledge the complexity of the culture they were entering into. All the Americans express that they were traumatized by the violence that erupted, but they do not once allude to any sense of responsibility regarding how their presence, and considerable money, enticed the corruption around them.

It is unclear what director Gabe Polsky’s point of view is on this situation. Perhaps he intended that the actions of these rash capitalists speak for themselves. (Warshaw is the consulting producer on the film.) As it stands, Red Penguins lacks a fuller analysis or overview. 

There is still one moment when the film comes alive. Alexander Lyubimov, a famous Russian TV show host, whose program attempted to offer a progressive-leaning view on the situation of Post-Soviet Russia and who was involved in reporting on the Red Penguins, mentions the murder of his fellow host, Vladislav Listev. He says Listev was one of his best friends, and, without tearing up, he misses him incredibly. Nowhere else in this film is there a glimmer of real sorrow, of genuine contrition.