Tom Cruise has nothing on Tommila Jorma. Imagine someone took Mission Impossible, John Wick, Indiana Jones and The Raid and put them in a blender, then made a movie out of the mix. Now imagine it done by Finns :) To be honest, the percentage of Finnish movies that I enjoyed tremendously is way larger than American ones. They mix serious realism, humor and fantasy within interesting and entertaining stories.
In this particular case a group of retreating Germans mess with a tough and relentless old man and get to regret it. There are some really gruesome scenes as well as some that I think were meant to be funny. The Wonder Woman-like scene was clearly in jest, for example, and it was pretty early on. The level of toughness the main character has also shifts from believable to unbelievable to epic fantasy really fast. I kind of regret this, because as hard as it would have been to make this realistic, it was really close for a quarter of an hour, then it all went into the fantastic. There is also a truck full of extras that do nothing the entire film.
This is not the first film coming out from the Tommila-Helander family, Rare Exports from 2010 was also ridiculous and extremely entertaining. I may have to look into everything they've done now. For a 6 million dollar budget, this is absolutely an excellent film.
Bottom line: Extremely entertaining, but also quite forgettable, akin to so many blockbuster action movies nowadays, but done with a lot more style on a percent of the budget. Recommended.
In this particular case a group of retreating Germans mess with a tough and relentless old man and get to regret it. There are some really gruesome scenes as well as some that I think were meant to be funny. The Wonder Woman-like scene was clearly in jest, for example, and it was pretty early on. The level of toughness the main character has also shifts from believable to unbelievable to epic fantasy really fast. I kind of regret this, because as hard as it would have been to make this realistic, it was really close for a quarter of an hour, then it all went into the fantastic. There is also a truck full of extras that do nothing the entire film.
This is not the first film coming out from the Tommila-Helander family, Rare Exports from 2010 was also ridiculous and extremely entertaining. I may have to look into everything they've done now. For a 6 million dollar budget, this is absolutely an excellent film.
Bottom line: Extremely entertaining, but also quite forgettable, akin to so many blockbuster action movies nowadays, but done with a lot more style on a percent of the budget. Recommended.