re-eino

Imagine, growing up during the 80s. It seems like everything is possible. Bennett is told to let out some steam, corrupt corporate executives snorting cocainum in a dystopian cyber future with hookers and maybe a schedule for a ninja attack later?

The year is now 2017. Arnold is long done being the governator and is fully re-refueled for relaunch or re-burst or whatever. Arnold is not a clone, he has been re-invented! Today's re-faded Arnold has become boring and soft, releasing flop after another. We can't account this disaster only for his absence in the movie industry. He had already been failing for 10 years before he decided to take a break. Reality unfortunately is that Arnold needs to be the Terminator, Conan, Matrix Commando, Ben Richards, Conan in retirement, God and so on. Arnold can't be the weeping father to prove his actor skills, no that's stupid!

The moment this movie started and the soundtrack kicked in, there was no coming back from that. Nobody means no harm and everyone is so upset and really supportive, but don't know what to say, emotionally drained and even vengeful! Yeah, and we should think about the kids too, how everything affects them dramatically, when your daddy is upset and people around you are angry. This movie also left me emotionally drained and upset, not a pleasant Friday afternoon, when you only want to let out some steam with a good movie.

Nobody in this movie, but Arnold matters and nobody would watch this movie without Arnold. He is the star here and that's how it's supposed to be, but that doesn't mean anybody around him can't be interesting either. This is a terrible family drama cry-fest of a movie and it's hard, trying to figure out what Arnold is trying to do in such a movie and why was this movie even made? Somebody should be finding some proper roles for him ASAP so we don't waste any more what's left of him! Somebody who can, fire his manager and find someone who writes Arnold the roles himself if necessary! Possible future contains Twins 2 with Eddie Murphy and The Legend of Conan, I'll keep my fingers crossed for the latter.

Just had to watch this because I'm hooked on survival-theme movies. Maybe I had passed it if I had noticed it was one of those movies with a "mystery" element. It's hard enough to do a decent survival movie without any extra themes and true enough, this movie might had been at least decent as a strict survival movie.

Everything starts promising enough. Two friends with their girlfriends leave a city for snow hiking in the forests. Soon enough however the mystery element comes to play and the movie fails instantly. There are several occasions where something irrational and not so subtle stuff happens. One of the guys is just constantly trying to convince the others that's not a big deal. Perhaps some hillbillies are playing pranks etc. and he succeeds every time! This is one of the major flaws in the movie and such a typical fail that it's very annoying. Nobody in their right mind would sleep comfortably and wait some new weird stuff to just happen in dark woods without giving it a second thought. Instead they would get back to their car as fast as possible even if it was only some hillbillies having fun at their expense. But no, they have to wait until parasites begin drilling into their skulls before they're convinced it's probably safer to get back home.

So why did we need the mystery element here? Probably the writer / director realized he didn't have any new ideas for a survival movie and thought he could get off the hook by adding the mystery element. Very few movies in the genre have anything new to add, but I still rather watch another unoriginal realistic movie than a stupid one that's not even funny (unlike The Core which is hilarious). If you find some guilty pleasure from survival movies, then there are much better options you might have not seen yet from The Poseidon Adventure to Open Water and 127 Hours and many more in between.

Dome Karukoski made himself known in the Finnish cinema with the movie 'Tyttö sinä olet tähti'. This movie is very similar in at least in two aspects: In both movies we can see "teenage" love tension. The girl in this movie, actor Marjut Maristo is actually about 23 years old and the boy is about 18 years old. The other similar thing about these movies is the lack of content and originality.

So how are these movies different? This movie has something which 'Tyttö sinä olet tähti' was lacking and that is pseudo artistic sequences. For example the beginning sequence in the rain with the gramophone was very tasteless and mockery to true art. I think the director must divide all music in two categories, there's pop music and there's Mozart. Even though I hadn't my hopes very high before, after this sequence I was completely prepared for a bad movie. There's of course nothing bad about Mozart, but I despise the way the music was used here in this shot.

After this the movie goes completely wild. We jump forward in time. The boy is having troubles with society and with himself and he is sent to an island with troubled kids. These kids are supposed to be very disturbed because of their past. However there's no guards and no rules whatsoever. We have a family here in the same cabin with these disturbed boys and they are having fun there as if they were on a vacation. Soon after arriving the main character Juhani gets a golden shower from these boys and he's isolated as punishment in a dark hole like in some Van Damme movie, but he won't squeal on the other boys. After he gets out he's now suddenly friends with these rednecks and don't even consider a revenge.

There's a lot's of stupid stuff going around in the movie, most of which are these pseudo artistic sequences where Juhani's past is revealed in small parts. One thing bothering me a lot is that there's no attempt to give a character for Juhani's mother, she's just silent. This is why her motivation (at the end scene of these flashbacks) remains completely curtained and I didn't buy it for a second. It's just one of the sequences where the characters in this movie do unimaginable things just to progress the plot and make it seem more complete. The actions of the character is based on nothing and are added just for "shock" value as many other sequences in the movie.

More of these types of sequences can be found in many places. One of the most funniest parts was a sequence where the brute (the largest of the boys) hurts himself and has to take his shirt off. The wife (in the family) is taking care of him and notices his scars. She gets turned on when she hears about the sexual and physical abuse of which the brutes father is responsible for. After this they end up having sex and this unbelievable "side plot" of passion has an incredibly unbelievable ending as well which culminates in a weird way with the emotions of the main character to make the side plot seem somehow relevant to the main plot.

I'm not going to talk in detail how this movie was made. I didn't notice anything original in the directing or in the storyline. The story is actually just typical Finnish erotic drama with no content and the actors can't shine in this movie no matter how hard they would try. This goes into same series with 'Levottomat' and other such movies. I would feel sorry for the actors if I didn't know that they got money by acting in this movie.

For a decent new Finnish movie it's better to see 'Paha Maa' by Aku Louhimies. It wasn't an attempt to make superb realism, but it's certainly more entertaining and atmospheric compared to this one.