Wonderfully offbeat film!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

'Make it just how it must have been' -- no doubt this idea was most prominent in director Pekka Parikka's mind when he produced 'Talvisota'.The result is an impressive tale about the Finn's unfortunate war against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1939-'40. Supported by authentic military gadgets, we see the men of the Finnish army leaving home, joining their army unit between hope and fear, and doing their duty when war did arrive.That's all this film has to offer. But it surely is enough. Everybody with military experience of his/her own will warm up to Talvisota's chosen human angle.However, there can be some criticism about this film's chosen narrow point of view. Just focusing on the Finns themselves, it leaves out any wider scope. History makes clear, though, that the Soviet's poor military performance against their tiny Finnish opponent did much to persuade Adolf Hitler to attack the Soviet Union himself. That happened one and a half year later, with disastrous results.

Honestly, I can't understand why Russia was unhappy with the release of this film. After all, there was only one unfriendly line about the Soviet Union in the whole film, namely the complaint about the use of explosive ammunition, deemed forbidden by a Finnish soldier and probably was that too, but I don't know the Geneva Convention that well.On the other hand... after a Finnish soldier decides to use a communist pamphlet for wiping purposes, he gets blown up as the appropriate form of punishment for that kind of sacrilege, I presume...And that's not the only politically cautionary measure here. The Soviet Union wanted only to secure Leningrad and if the Finnish would have been more reasonable and less mistrustful the bloodshed would have been avoided. That pretty much is the political take on the events back then and it is awfully close to a fairytale.That becomes clearest during the discussion of military support. First the soldiers express hope that Sweden might help, later there's talk of America. But for whatever weird reason the word "German" or "Germany" isn't uttered a single time in the whole film. Just for your information, Ribbentrop's own son was actually fighting in a Finnish unit during that time, as a personal guarantee that the Ribbentrop-Molotov-treaty wasn't meant that way. Plus the fact that Germany build its submarines in Finland already during the Weimar Republic, in secrecy, since the treaty of Versailles forbade it.Both sides are shown by far more innocent here than they were and that is an important misrepresentation for the message of the film to make sense.But o.k., enough of that. Considering the action, I must say that the film I alluded to in the title of this comment was a pretty strong source of inspiration too. It's not black and white and it's set in snow and pine and birch forests, but that sums up the differences pretty much.The strongest part of the film is actually the psychological presentation of its main characters and the spirit of the Finnish army. That is done skillfully, I have to admit. But that is about it. Honestly, the war scenes in "A very long engagement" were by far better, but the budget of that film was also bigger, granted.All in all I can't give more than 6 out of 10.

For being made by Finland this is a great movie and have more emotions then big Hollywood movies. You ca really see in this movie how bad the conditions were during the war. Its amazing how the Finns really could stand up so hard against communist Russia. And its a great how to see Hakala loose his brother and still keep his focus up and don't give in. Im glad that they have done this more dirty than the newer movies, conditions in war are dirty in reality. The Finns doesn't have much ammunition or clothes and was bombed with mortars but still they kept they faith up. The Russians pumped out mass-soldier attacked and was in the beginning pushed back time after time by the Finns, but after a time the Russians begun to take the control of the situation and Finland doesn't have enough men to fight. But a heroic try to keep the Russians back as long as they could.I love this movie, one of the best I ever seen.

This is an excellent film, brutally honest and tightly reality-bound depiction of the defense of Finland against a better equipped, many times larger, but (fortunately!) poorly led Soviet army, in a bone-chilling arctic winter. Like an image of what a hell frozen over would be like.Though I am a Finn, and understand the language, out of interest I watched the film with English subtitles. I was dismayed to discover how much was lost in the translation; the subtitles are more like short summaries of the gist of what is being said, without any of the flair and flavour.As such, the film is a bit spartan and bleak for Hollywood-saturated eyes, but so is war.In all, an excellent war film, depicting the horror of war more tangibly than any other that I've seen, save for "The Thin Red Line".