One of my all time favorites.

Good movie but grossly overrated

The first must-see film of the year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

i'm not a pseudo-intellectual trying to feel good watching intellectual black and white french movies. I actually want to be entertained. One guy is attacked by surprised by the other guy that arrived in a motorcycle and stopped 2 meters behind him? Need to say more? Maybe a hybrid motorcycle? Did Elon Musk financed this movie? Reading the synapse this scene is catalyst of the ensuing plot of the movie. If a scene of this importance is treated like this...An it's not like until that point, the movie did anything to make you keep watching, the premise has been used and abused. So yes, this is the review of the fist 13 minutes of the movie. If i want to be entertained with bad writing and nonsense i watch so blockbuster action movie.

. . . (they're all moochers and thieves), new moms (they'll just ignore the baby monitor to pleasure door-to-door salesmen as soon as their husbands leave for work), Germans (stingy--"We have strawberries; take a BIG one"), farmers (road hogs and polluters), RV families (if they find you high and dry, they'll strand you in the drink), businessmen (can't spare a quarter for a panhandler since they don't have anything smaller than a twenty), sports fans (too sensitive to be exposed to "gimps"), recreational bikers (they rudely rev noisy machines while night-shifters are trying to sleep), karaoke singers (cannot even pronounce the lyrics), small business manufacturers (their products are death traps), Finns (they spend all day drinking), management (it keeps workers so busy their spouses are driven to cheat), parents (who stuff children's brains with misinformation) . . . Bottom line: don't watch AALTRA if you prefer your flicks to be politically correct.

Friends by default, two a-holes, who just happen to be quadriplegic, hit the highway in "Aaltra", a road movie that subtly recalls David Lynch's "The Straight Story", since the journey is accomplished with a slow-moving vehicle, in which its occupants have opportune encounters with heretofore strangers. Neighbors at war before the accident, the neighbors bury the hatchet and join forces in a common cause; to sue the manufacturer of the agricultural tractor that left them in suspended animation from the waist down. For "Aaltra" to function as a comedy, the filmmaker needs to distance the audience from the pathetic condition of L'employe(Benoit Delepine) and L'ouvrier agricole(Gustave Kervern). The filmmaker has to erase the chair. Since both men lack any semblance of having scruples about other people's property and hospitality, this isn't hard. We soon forget about their inability to walk, as both men exhibit a negligence to be grateful for the kindness that strangers make the mistake of displaying towards these misanthropic "cripples"(crippled in the humanistic sense). L'employe and L'ouvrier are like that guy from "Murderball", whose friends testify to having the same type-A personality, before the accident that sentenced him to the chair. When L'employe and L'ouvrier were laid up in hospital beds, nobody came to visit them. As Paul the Beatle once sang, "the long you take is equal to the love you make."To further minimize our sympathies towards L'employe and L'ouvrier, the filmmaker employs formal elements to make their handicap more abstract. Chiaroscuro deemphasizes the immediacy of both men's conditions. The black and white photography blanches out the flesh tones from people, which makes the subject more like an inanimate object than a repository for memories and dreams. If blood is shed, the blood is black. Less visceral. Without realizing it, the viewer becomes more objective. In black and white, you look less human. Since "Aaltra" frees the viewer from the requisite compassion one contemplates towards people with disabilities, the film's success hinges on how, not if, these two disgruntled travelers avenge their gripe against the tractor company. It's not a tragi-comedy, it's a deadpan one. The manufacturer is Finnish-based. Filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki is from Finland.Fin.

Aaltra is a film like no other. It is not just dark humour it's a pitch black comedy. The only thing is that the comedy doesn't start at the beginning of the film and I was wondering if someone had got it wrong. When too feuding neighbours both get themselves in to a fight a subsequent accident with a tractor leaves them both paralysed from the waist down. Wheelchair bound and completely inept at being disabled the two then venture on a highly bizarre road trip to try and get compensation from the company who's tractor got them in the mess in the first place. Where are the laughs? I hear you cry, well about twenty minutes into the film I started to chuckle and by the end I was wiping the tears from my eyes. You see the genius of the humour is in the main characters, who continue to feud, but secretly get on and aid each other in their quest. Imagine grumpy old men on wheels. Getting mugged, mugging themselves, stealing, out staying there welcome as irritating house guests, getting drunk, lost and in allsorts of scrapes once it gets going there isn't a dull moment. They say the essence of comedy is timing and these two are the masters of the pregnant pause, this added to the fact that they just look funny makes this film so enjoyable to watch. I don't want to give too much away; I want you all to experience the film as I did. Know a little not a lot about it and enjoy it loads.