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Reviews
Tuntematon sotilas (2017)
What a waste. Description of problems of Finnish film industry.
First of all, there are reasons why movie classics aren't produced several times. How would Godfather 2017, Star Wars 2017, Titanic 2017, Schindler's List 2017 sound? Not very good in my opinion. Right thing to do would have been to produce a completely new film. To follow the same story line/dialogue/characters as in the original and remake of the 80's sets the foundations of the film wrong. And here we come to the problem. This is a "safe play" in film making. You will get funding for this kind of project in Finland but the end result is lame. How about making a new story line? Hundreds of thousands Finnish solders fought the war - there is lot of stories to be told.
Original film was produced in the fifties with actors that were veterans of the war themselves, some of them being high ranking actors of the time. This sets the bar unreachable for any remakes.
The film tries to reach new perspectives adding home front, abuse in conquered territories, war crimes etc. which is a good idea but feels glued because the foundations of the old version. In one scene Finnish soldier shoots a surrendering Russian, this is not correct. Finnish soldiers were lacking ammunition those days so murdering of surrendering Russians did happen, but mostly with an knife or an back of a rifle. Hatred for the Russians grew also from the partisan attacks in the north where Finnish civilians were murdered, and soldiers had their revenge to surrendering opponent. How much powerful scene would have been shown this way and how many layers that would have added to the scene? In one scene Finnish soldiers meeting a pet rabbit in forest is just comical.
In the end description of the war is OK (could have been much more brutal), acting is excellent at times. Too bad it was wasted in re-make, not in new film.