Bringing Out the Shred (2006) (V)

User Rating:

8.9/10   

Director:

Jere Vainikka

Writer:

Jere Vainikka (writer)

Release Date:

15 October 2006 (Finland)

Genre:

Short | Action | Drama | Sport

Tagline:

There is only one way to come out clean

Plot:

Mikko is a young cop and a one-time footbag player. When investigators come across illegal gambling involving footbag leagues, Mikko is tapped to go undercover. |

Plot Keywords:

Footbag | Undercover Cop | Battle

Cast

Aleksi Airinen	...	Pelaaja #2
Tuukka Antikainen	...	Tuukka
Sami Hirvonen	...	Routa
Jouni Kemppainen	...	Hautala
Ville Laakso	...	Ville
Mikko Lepistö	...	Mikko
Juho Marjo	...	Juho
Janne Pesonen	...	Pelaaja #1
Antti Riuttanen	...	Kylmänen
Teemu Salonen	...	Räty
Antti Teittinen	...	Poliisipäällikkö Teittinen
Jere Vainikka	...	Vaara
Felix Zenger	...	Zenger

Runtime:

38 min

Country:

Finland

Language:

Finnish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

Finland:S (DVD rating)

Filming Locations:

Kuopio, Finland

Trivia:

Many scenes in the movie were shot in the director's living room.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the beginning of the final battle, Juho is standing outside the ring even though he hasn't arrived to the match yet.

Quotes:

Mikko: Everybody lies best to himself

Footbag like you've never seen it before...

This film is absolutely one-of-a-kind.

Filmmaker Jere Vainikka has brought us into a fantasy world based on an alternative sport called "footbag" (some may know it by the trade-marked name, Hacky Sack®).

In the film, a young Finnish cop (Mikko Lepistö) is placed undercover in the seedy, dark alleys of Helsinki's gambling underworld -- as a member of an elite footbag gang. He must try to infiltrate the gang to expose the true leaders of this illegal gambling enterprise.

What's inventive here isn't the story-line, but the context: footbag as a dark, almost forbidden sport -- in essence, attributing the other meaning of "obscurity" to this relatively unknown athletic discipline. Footbag players meet in dark, secluded places to practice their craft, and then sneak into closed boxing arenas to have their battles with other footbag gangs from around Finland.

If you've never seen footbag played before, this film has some of the best scenes of the sport ever captured for the cinema. In popular film, footbag is usually shown on the sidelines as a circle of kids on a college campus just kicking in a circle in the background. In the movie, "She's All That", footbag was spotlighted briefly in one scene.

But this film really takes us into the world, albeit a fantasy world, of the sport. While clearly a tongue-in-cheek parody of dime-store cop stories, the redeeming value is in the brilliant camera-work and editing of the footbag battles themselves -- precise, furious movements combined with a brilliantly-overlaid soundtrack.

This could do for footbag what Dirty Dancing did for ballroom. Definitely something to see. It does run a little slow in parts, so get ready to fast-forward to the footbag battles. They make this film.