Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This film was touted to me as the first one set in Lapland during the often forgotten Lapland War between Finland and Nazi-Germany (1944-1945). This was false marketing for the story is mostly set in Russia and the Lapland War does not start until two-thirds into the film.The plot aims to be a love story between lovers from opposite sides in the conflict, against all odds, but that angle is obfuscated by side plots and the paper thin story, in which everything is treated with the same greyish brush.Furthermore, the special effects in the action scenes are mostly not believable. Bombs repeatedly explode literally two meters away from the protagonists who are standing up yet miraculously remain unharmed, while German soldiers, instead of seeking cover, fire at attack planes with pistol calibre small arms.I assume the film makers wanted to create an artsy, dark film to gloss over the fact that they lacked the budget to depict realistic action and atrocity scenes and they failed in that attempt. There are some good scenes, but on the whole the story feels disjointed, the characters have little chemistry and their actions appear poorly motivated.It is too bad that a story with potential did not meet with a better execution. For a better film set in the same area and during the same time period, watch Kukushka (2002).

About death camps rather than war and takes a horribly bleak outlook. Not what that part of the war was mostly about.I found it gratuitously nasty, because it intentionally picks on the worst aspects.Something that is anyway perfectly well known.

a war film. not different by many others. same story of love in war time, same soft illustration of Nazi crimes, same moral lesson in nice package. the photography is remarkable, the acting is an interesting exercise to use minimalism for save the character, the music in beautiful but, after few strange errors , it is obvious its great sin - it not gives something new. despite the story, the film seems be only a large picture, cold , gray, and the emotion seems be the duty of viewer to imagine it. a film who remains beautiful. like a lot of films about same theme. but the courage to exploring key-details , the craziness of war as stage for a touching love story is missing.

This is just another finnish war drama which are made every year with the same clichès and spices. The package is just a bit different every time. I wonder when they'd stop supporting patriotic films and put the focus on different kind of films that are completely absent in Finnish cinema. There's so much talent that gets wasted if they make the same stuff over and over again.Knowing the director's background in music videos, it doesn't really surprise that the film seems like a two hour long commercial music video rather than a film about love and war. The problem is that it doesn't touch at all when it should. Character development is non-existent and characters are left vague. All the atrocities are bypassed quite swiftly just as if nothing bad had ever happened. The main character is pregnant but the development of pregnancy is not shown at all. As a viewer i was left with a role of an observer. I was supposed to just admire the scenery.The film is technically perfect but that's all there is to it. The sex scenes are actually so amusing and lack a good taste so much so that i think it will never get an international release.To sum it up it's an average finnish war drama from a capable director who gave us Puhdistus some years earlier. It remains as his best film in my opinion. Finnish audiences who've seen war films over and over again might find this film quite tiring. I find Puhdistus more awarding to watch than this.