Raid

Raid is back in town.He finds out his girlfriend Tarja is dead.Acting work in this movie is great.Kai Lehtinen is our leading man, who doesn't talk a lot but acts much more.Oiva Lohtander as Jansson is brilliant.Juha Muje makes his drunken Sundman a tragicomic character.Mari Rantasila plays Tarja.Then there are some Finnish movie veterans.Helge Herala plays Emperor-Tarja's father, and even on the hospital bed he does a great job.Sakari Jurkka is Jansson's father, and the same thing goes with him as with Herala.It has a couple nice action scenes, but that's all.Overall, an OK movie, but nothing groundbreaking.

The plot of Raid continues the one of the earlier TV-series: the system (politicians and corporate world) is corrupted, and the "little people" have to find alternative ways to deal with the situation.

The movie is strangely professionally done for a Finnish one. All the characters have appropriate actors, who are able to add some depth into their performance from the TV-series. However, as a stand-alone movie this could be a little hard to follow specially in the beginning, since the "sequel-feeling" is quite strong.

In June of 2005, the Finnish embassy and the MHz channel arranged a special showing of the RAID sequel at the AFI Silver, just outside Washington DC. We stood in line surrounded by enthusiastic Finnish-Americans. Kai Lehtinen and Tapio Piirainen had flown in, signed autographs and posed for snapshots with fans.

The film delivered most of our favorite characters in another involved political conspiracy with economic consequences. Running gags from the series were continued in the film. It was hard to judge if the film was funnier than the series, or if the enthusiastic crowd made it seem more humorous.

The events in the series were fictional, but believable. Raid was still the talented and instinctive hero, and Uki, Tarja, Jansson and Sundman were still very believable characters; the actions they took were plausible enough to suspend disbelief. Sundman's relationship with a plump model was intriguing.

This film was more action-packed, but it was more difficult to believe that the climactic events could have occurred without serious repercussions for Raid and his cohort. And the film's villain wasn't as memorable as Hammar.

After the showing, Lehtinen laughed a lot while he and Piirainen fielded questions from the stage. Kai seemed very surprised and flattered to be a hit in America, but was grounded enough to brush off any talk of leaving Finland to pursue a Hollywood career.

I had loved the 2000 series and didn't even know that this sequel existed until reading the blurb on the brand new 1st English translation of a Raid novel Raid and the Blackest of Sheep. (Thank you, Ice Cold Crime!!!!!) I immediately launched on an internet search and managed to get a copy. I found it simply wonderful - all the more so after having read the cited novel.

Unlike my fellow reviewer above, I really appreciated the inclusion of so many characters from the series (Sunderman, the Cowboy, et al.) OK. The Cowboy was there as a reference point only, but the series was so good that I appreciated every link between the two. The plot is complex and, yes, at times a little implausible, but it is also not to be taken entirely seriously. There is much of what I have come to learn from having watched all of Aki Kaurismaki's oeuvre is Suomi humor.

The acting was great. The characters stayed in character. The music, which echoed that of the series, was great. There are many scenes where the countryside of Finland looks much more beautiful than it did in the series - almost to the extent that I wonder if people had kvetched about the series giving the country a bad name.

I will be watching my DVDs of both the series and this film many times over the coming years and if you get them on DVD so will you.

Raid (the superb Kai Lehtinen) returns to Finland to find his ex-girlfriend Tarja (Mari Rantasila) only to hear that she has been killed in an arson made on the public voice press headquarters. Grieving, Raid begins his own investigation of what happened. Meanwhile Captain Jansson (Oiva Lohtander)of the Finnish police is investigating the murder of a protester during the world bank meeting held in Helsinki. Soon he realizes that all clues might be pointing into the wrong direction and with his friends, officers Huusko (Pekka Huotari) and Susisaari (Kirsti Väänänen) begin to take a closer look into the investigation. In the background spins a conspiracy and a strange charecter known as the legioner, but what do all these have to do with the same magazine as the one that Tarja worked for?

While Finland hasn't had a chance to boast with great movies until now with "The Man Without A Past" there still have been numerous great movies that have been made here. Considering that money is limited for movies, most have been small budget comedies and drama movies, but finally Finland can say that they have their own action hero. Kai Lehtinen is superb as the quiet Raid and Oiva Lohtander does a fabulous role as the sarcastic Jansson. While the movie has moments of slight clichés such as the Legioner, the whole movie fixes them and allows the movie really to shine. An excellent action movie with a decent plot that allows the audience really to connect with the characters, these are real people not super heroes.

4.5/5