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Tali-Ihantala 1944 (2007)

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
So, another Finnish war movie, 7 December 2007

Author: Stenu from Tampere, Finland

First of all, I have to say that I had huge expectations about the movie. I went to theater to see some mind-blowing action. I was hoping that Åke Lindman had made something spectacular as his last movie. I also believed in his directing talents. Now I sadly have to say that the movie didn't fulfill my expectations.

The movie was a bit bouncing: Going there, doing that, coming back and going again. Different people fought in different places and sometimes it was hard to follow what was happening as a whole. Well this wasn't too disturbing as the movie still was entertaining. Especially all tank-scenes were amazing. The lack of money, which was clearly visible, was maybe the most disruptive thing in the movie. As mentioned in the movie, there were about 250 cannons and mortars, plus bomber planes, targeting the Tali-Ihantala area. But when the "big fight" came, it looked like about 10 guns were bombing the woods with smoke grenades (And I can say this because I have served in mortar company in the Finnish army). I'm sure it looked like that because there were not enough money to make it look realistic. I was also hoping more soldiers running in the woods because hey, it was supposed to be the biggest fight in the northern Europe!

Now the rating of the movie. I was balancing between 6 and 7. I would have wanted to give it 7 points, but as I was thinking it, the movie actually left me disappointed. It wasn't as astonishing as I wanted. It was just another Finnish war movie, and even Tuntematon sotilas from the year 1955 and especially The Winter war from 1989 are much better movies than this one.

So, should you go to watch Tali-Ihantala? a) Finnish movie business needs your money, so YES! b) If you like Finnish war movies, definitely yes. But if you decide to go watch it, don't have too big expectations so you won't be disappointed.

P.S. Not a single mortar was shown during the movie. Why? Glad they mentioned them though ;)

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
think of it as a documentary, not a movie, 20 March 2008

Author: janne-ojaniemi from Finland

Like I said in the discussion-threads about this movie: this a documentary masquerading as a movie. There's zero character-development and "drama". What we have instead is warfare. No BS, just warfare. If you expect good characters and all the other things you could find in other movies, this is not a movies for you. But if you are interested in warfare, then this movie delivers.

And to comment on the review by Mr. Stensson from Sweden: Continuation War is in fact _widely_ discussed in Finland :). And fighting alongside Germans was realistically speaking the only choice. Allying with the West was not possible, since Germany occupied Norway. Allying with Sweden was attempted, but Soviets would not allow it. Allying with Soviets was not an option, since they kept on harassing Finland after the war, and it was thought that they would resume hostilities sooner or later. And I would say that the West made a deal with the devil as well. In many ways the Stalinist USSR was just as bad as Nazi-Germany was.

Like it's name says, Continuation War was a direct continuation of Winter War. Had Winter War not happened, there would not have been Continuation War. And we all know who started the Winter War....

Finns never attempted to attack Leningrad, and they in fact voluntarily stopped at the old border in the Karelian Isthmus (well, they straightened the front by going over the border in the middle, but that's about it). Had they wanted to, they could have taken Leningrad, since Soviets had moved most of their troops against the Germans.

I would like to know what we _should_ have done instead? And in any case: hindsight is always 20/20. What all this has to do with the qualities of this particular movie is beyond me... If you want to further discuss this topic, my advice is to head to the discussion-forum.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
If you can't say anything good..., 7 December 2007

Author: Antti Salminen from Finland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

you shouldn't say anything at all. But I'll have to say something. I was so disappointed.

When you get your actors from a badly acted Finnish soap-opera, you'll get the level of acting too. Most of the time acting & dialog feels like a parody from a 1950s Finnish military-farce; even when the movie tries to bee precisely accurate to the real incidents or dialogs. In many scenes I felt embarrassment towards the actors. Amount of clichés was overwhelming. 'nuff said.

It's understandable that most of the scenes feel lose from the whole picture, as the movie chops the main battles of the Ihantala in different parts. But still most of the scenes feel way too shallow and short. The battle scenes are way too short and clean to be in a war movie. War ain't suppose to be pretty, that is just wrong for the sake of the audience and for the war veterans we want to honor.

Sound-world was flat, or the movie theater were I went didn't know how to use the volume. I know that you can't talk with regular tone of voice inside a battle tank, not nowadays and specially not in WW2 era. Weird choice from the director was play the classical soundtrack in-front and the battle noises at-back in few battle scenes, where it would have worked obviously much better in the other way.

Well only good thing was that movie was, in a big picture, faithful for the real events. Director did give a notice that Finns lost a lot of ground in the beginning of the Ihantala battle. Unfortunately the movie managed to hide the most intense defense-battles at the end.

I could recommend few much better TV-documentaries, more informative, more intense..

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6 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
More of a documentary than a movie., 31 December 2007

Author: tomimt from Finland

If you are expecting your standard war film with a overly melodramatic love story plot line and all the other standard war film plot devices you are looking from the wrong place: Tali-Ihantala 1944 is more of a documentary trying to portray all the military units, which took part of the battle, which turned the war luck in Finland/Russia war to the advantage of Finland.

For a movie there is just too many characters in the story, which are left to the background of the greater drama of warfare. The film shows quite effectively how the military units work together and solely. There's very little sugar coating of the war, so in a word, you could have made three or four different war films from the material portrayed here in. The biggest issue here is, that this would have worked much better as a documentary series, with each episode concentrating on different units and key people. Now the film is too heavy, yet still too short.

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A Monument, created to be as it should stand, 13 February 2008

Author: Shaolin_Apu from Seinäjoki, Finland

Best thing about watching Tali-Ihantala is that you get to watch a different type of war movie after a while. The old school movie mandatorily adds women and children to plotwise useless roles to create the so called drama, but in Tali-Ihantala you get no Rambos, no cheese, no political ubercorrectness and nothing else but just war as it realistically should be, within production limitations of course.

The barrenness of no prolonged drama sequences and no main characters may strike some people as cinematographically unwise, but Tali-Ihantala is not the first war movie to use such a feature. Similar approach was used in "Thin Red Line" where there was no main characters either, but Tali-Ihantala tries not to be artsy and go too far. It comes close to a documentary but, in fact, it still is far from being a documentary.

Another film Tali-Ihantala is very close to is the "Longest Day", although the Soviet Union side is only shown as the enemy and only Finns will have any dialogue. The strenghts of the movie include fact that every main character has a historical counterpart, and a lot of authentic equipment was used in the making. The weaknesses are the limited production resources but every actor seem to do his best regardless of how amateur he is.

It is a great film, more close to actual history than "Tuntematon Sotilas" if you just allow yourself to accept it.

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1 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
No real characters, no real drama, 19 January 2008

Author: pertti.jarla from helsinki, finland

Tali-Ihantala 1944 tells the story of the climactic final battles of the Finnish-Russian Continuation war. The official, polished story, the kind you would expect some veterans organization to approve: the major events of the battle are shown in chronological order. We see the action of infantry, tanks, long range recon patrols, artillery, air force, and different levels of command. All soldiers and officers behave well and correctly, there is no bad behavior or cowardice whatsoever.

This is one of the films major problems: the clean and tidy behavior of the troops is very likely historically inaccurate and false, but it is also very bad drama. We see endless orders, discussions and briefings without any conflict or tension between the characters. And the cast is huge: most people have only one or two scenes, they come and go without anyone developing any real character (Olli Ikonen perhaps comes closest as General Major Vihma). You cannot develop much compassion to these fighting and dying men when you don't know anything about them. The dialogue is poor: people describe the tactical situation in a textbook manner, and most attempts at more casual conversation fall laughably flat. "So, you receive your baptism of fire now!"

The obvious budget limitations have been commented by other reviewers. This film is a failure, recommended for fans of T 34 and KV tanks.

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3 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Where's the story?, 16 January 2008

Author: David Igra from Stockholm, Sweden

As always when making a film out of historical events one is challenged with the task of trying to engage the audience, usually by adding characters or embellishing characters already available thus allowing the viewer to relate and or follow the characters throughout the film.

This film is bold enough not to fall for such obvious flirtations with the audience, it has little more story than the historical facts and the characters that appear do so just very briefly. All too briefly for anyone in the audience to remember little more than a name, maybe a rank.

All in all it becomes a rather confusing experience with names and ranks and orders flying around in the Finnish forest with the only exception of a Russian tank blowing up, or was it a Finnish tank?

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3 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Why is this kind of patriotism never questioned?, 3 February 2008

Author: stensson from Stockholm, Sweden

Finland's struggle against the brutally attacking Soviets in 1939-1940 was heroic. What came after is not much discussed. Finland became a Nazi allied in 1941-1944, not just regaining what it had lost in 1940, but coming rather close to Leningrad, occupying some of the Soviet forces.

This is about the final battles in Finland during 1944. If this was a German picture about the Eastern front, it would be much questioned indeed. It's all so simple here. The Fins are the idealized heroes, with all the common movie virtues of its soldiers. You've got the tank heroes, the elite troop heroes, the ordinary infantry heroes, the artillery heroes, the general heroes.

An uncomplicated war movie celebrating the Finnish spirit, whatever that is. No questions about the prolonging of the war because of making friends with the devil.

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