Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier)

Original post date: 25 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✭✰

This movie is billed as the Finnish Platoon. However, this is World War II and not Vietnam. Yet the comparison is apt in many ways. As the movie shows, this war was not Finland’s finest hour. The Finns changed sides more than once, depending on which way things seemed to be going. The movie follows a platoon of young recruits (a few have serious acne problems) as they invade Russia and then get driven back in a bloody retreat. This is probably as gory a war movie as I have ever seen. Although it runs nearly three hours and there is not a single note of music in the entire soundtrack, the time passes quickly. The screening got off to an inauspicious start when they showed a print with French instead of English subtitles. The linguistic wimps in the audience who couldn’t read French remonstrated. From the lengthy credits, I would say virtually everyone in Finland worked on this movie. And judging from the last hour, half of Finland was blown up to make it.

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