Give me your papers!

Blame it on Incunabular. His comment on my post about the Riverwalk stuck in my memory and when I saw Cloak & Dagger on the pay-per-view menu I watched it. I'd seen it before, ages ago, but didn't remember it all that well. It's pretty good, though it is silly that after the tour guide says he can't take any more people, there are all those empty seats on the boat...

Those old-style video games ... boy, they bring back some memories.

But of course it has the classic error of Cold War spy movies: The Soviet guard tells the American agent "Дайте мне ваши бумаги (dayte mnye vashi bumagi)" which is literally "Give me your papers." Unfortunately, in Russian, "bumagi" is "sheets of paper, pieces of paper". It's as if the guard is demanding Jack Flack's manuscript, or possibly his notes. What he should be asking for is Jack's документи (dokumenty), his documents, or just possibly his удостоверение личности (udostovereniye liichnosti), his proof of identity. But not his "papers".