No Russians were harmed or apparently hired in making this film.

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Well about three quarters of the roles for Americans generally go to Brit and Aussie actors so I'm ok with this. Daniel Day Lewis just won an Oscar for playing an iconic American historical figure. If American filmakers choose to employ American actors who are looking for work just as much as Eastern European actors my feathers remain unruffled.

Whether or not anyone thinks Americans can play any nationality is moot as far as Phantom goes because the director made a conscious choice to not use accents of any kind so the audience would view the characters simply as people and not specifically as soviets. Having made that decision there was no resson not to use American actors and from what the reviews are saying casting is the one thing he got right. Some actors are better than others at accents and the talent is as likely to be found in any nationality. People tend to notice the faults in an actor's accent if they are in regular contact with people who speak in said accent. I'm sure I'm convinced by fake southern accents that a person actually from the south would find just awful. Likewise to my ears not one single actor of any nationality including American has ever done a Boston accent correctly. (They tend to try to talk like the Kennedy's when no one but the Kennedy's talks like the Kennedys).

Looking foward David Duchovny doing silly accent. Guess having actual russians playing russians means there would be subtitles at those parts. Thats big no-no for *beep* Guess many of them cant read.

I ' m fine with subtitles in foreign films but the more elegant solution for making sure that the intended audience understands what is being said is to use English in American films. Honestly, if one's abiliity to suspend disbelief is so bad that they find Americans playing Russians so problematic I wonder how they enjoy any films at all. Few movies are 100% in sync with how things happen in reality.

None in California.

Considering they are Americans there is probably some Russian blood in there somewhere.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

Based on the trailer, it would appear that the intended audience is American, which makes the lack of Russian and/or bad Russian accents a good choice. Setting aside the fact that actors using generic Eastern European accents would flirt with parody, there is something interesting about presenting the Soviet "other" as ourselves, thus breaking down Cold War baggage some might have about a Russian military protagonist.