Romanovin kivet

Despite being a really poor movie is this Finnish action orgasm a true must-see phenomenon. The catch of the whole movie is "name a cliché and we will put it into this movie". With some first line comedy actors participating in this product you may feel some strange surrealist vibe going on when you see people doing things you wouldn't normally see them doing. For me the whole movie was 'Vintiöt gone Rambo' - and that's priceless I can tell. For example you didn't know what the phrase 'amazing escape' meant until you've seen this film.

The American action movie genre fits really poorly into Finnish milieu. When in the classic war movies Finns target everything before they shoot this time they will waste all large calibre ammo without hitting a thing. But to avoid any logic of course we will see some sniper-pistoliering as well in the scene where Patrick (or Pasi) shoots the air off some tyres from about half kilometers distance. Also enjoyable is the hero duos pseudo-Miami Vice sociopathic conduct whenever they just be 'normally'.

I also found very amusing thing about the film credits, for the most beloved and admired comedy-guru Spede Pasanen produced this film as Pertti Pasanen only to indicate that this is not a comedy production. Hooray for Spede anyway, the film is really bad but it's artistic value is totally a close encounter with the third kind.

One of the first attempts to do a completely finish action movie without a big budget and without any major star actors. When judging the film against that point of view, the result could have been much worse. But nevertheless, I've seen better movies...

Here's a film, that tries to be everything that Hollywood action films usually are: It tries to have witty dialog, explosive action, clever heroes, nasty baddies and a worth while treasure to hunt. Sadly it misses the mark by miles.

Firstly the writing is extremely bad. Every piece of dialog uttered out sounds so forced, that it's hard to believe, that they were even written by someone who actually knew how to write. This leads in many involuntarily funny situations. And it actually makes all characters look silly.

Then there's the actors, who actually these days are pretty good, who look like they don't have the slightest idea what they are doing. That might be for the fact, that there aren't so many action flicks done in Finland, so the genre is familiar to them only from the movies. And then there's a problem with actors cast in wrong roles, or the fact, that they are entirely in the wrong movie, like Kari Hietalahti, who just fits better in comedy shows than in any other roles. (Pretty much the cast from this flick starred in popular Finnish comedy series Riiviöt right after this film. The series also shared the director with this film.)

In all this film would be pretty decent, if it were done by group of film buffs with no money and with no intention to really to try to make money with it. But this indeed was in theatrical release in Finland, but I can't say was it laughed out from the theaters or not.

The most successful Finnish movie producer Spede Pasanen contacted these young fellows and offered to produce their movie. This is the result. The film's budget was 1.000.000 Finnish marks - which was nice amount of money in Finnish film budget scale then (it is only 170.000 Euros).

Romanovin kivet (The Romanov's stones) is also the first film of director Aleksi Mäkelä - who is nowadays one of the most successful film directors of Finland. He is also the only director (beside Renny Harlin) who can make great action scenes. The script is the weakest link in this one. It's a bunch of clichés and looks like it has been made by group of schoolboys. Which it is - in some ways. Mäkelä invited a group of his old friends (Samuli Edelmann, Santeri Kinnunen, Juha Veijonen, Kari Hietalahti) to star in the movie and together they planned the story. So there's many holes in the plot, but most of them are forgotten when you see the action scenes we were never seen in Finland before - made by us Finnish. This is of course absolutely worst film of Aleksi Mäkelä - but you must start somewhere.

7/10