Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Micransix Crappy film

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

brianshoebridge1 I really don't understand why this movie does not rate much, much more highly. It seems that Finns are the harshest critics. While they may have their reasons, for a wider audience I can't think of many better films on WW2. (I am Australian btw).This is a detailed, gripping retelling of a little known war. The attention to detail is outstanding, whether it is the tanks, the scenes, the positions or the thinking behind it all. For a minor language film (sorry Finns but it is the case) it is particularly lavish in quality, scope & depth.No, it is not a character drama. To be honest, the characters are only to hold the wider story together. If character drama is what you are after, look elsewhere or be disappointed. That is NOT what Tali- Inhatala is all about. I get the feeling that this movie was intended to be a statement for history & future generations - "this is what happened & how". It succeeds remarkably well in achieving this.A superb movie & historical record. Very, very highly recommended.

mausar Is it really a movie? Is it really a fictional documentary? Neither. It seems more a reenacting amateur video, than a real movie. It's not a documentary. A documentary requires clarity, but here, after almost 2 hours, you understand nothing about the 1944 Soviet offensive in Finland: you can see the reenactment of only a very little portion of the entire campaign, basically no maps (indeed, there is a map which explains quite nothing: no names of units involved in a scale too large to be useful) and no statistics at all. But… wait! We are speaking about a movie! Is this a real "movie"? A movie requires a plot. And here I see no plot at all, just series of little sketches. A movie requires a screenplay. And here I see no screenplay, just series of little textbook-style discussions about tactics, with no emotions involved. A movie requires characters. Here we can see no character, but some people who casually run or speak in front of a camera, with no character development at all. A movie requires actors: are they actors those involved in this movie? Mmmh… A movie, especially a war movie, requires action. But here I see very few actions, not realistic at all. Last but not least: a modern war movie requires magnificence. Oh yes, my dears! If CGI is already invented and introduced in cinema industry (I'm sorry for all the nostalgic of pre-CGI era), please use it! Because, after the stunning war actions in "Save private Ryan", "Band of Brothers" and "Pacific" series, "Letters from Iwo Jima" and so on, we (the average public) want to see something better than few soldiers running in a forest, some guns firing and tank duels involving two or three vehicles. Here is all amateur style: soldiers fall crying few seconds after they are hit and even when a shell hit a tank it makes just a "piff" with a little smoke cloud. OK, you don't have budget and you can't buy "Massive" or any other CGI software, nor you can pay salaries to large crews. Well: don't try to make a movie about Tali Ihantala, the largest battle in Nordic countries. It's just like making a low budget version of "The Lord of the Rings": you can try, just to have a laugh. If you don't have budget, please, try with other subjects. Last but not least: it's a Historical delusion. Because the battle of Tali Ihantala, fought between June and July of 1944 was an epic event in Europe (sometimes compared to a "Nordic Thermopylae" by historians) and, for sure, the most important battle for Finland in Second World War. It saved Finland from the same fate of the Baltic Countries, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries invaded or "liberated" by Ussr in 1944. It is indeed a very controversial war episode: outside Finland, while the Winter War (1939-40) is broadly known and morally accepted, the Continuation War (1941-44) is always a taboo. It's a unique case of a real Democracy which fought alongside Nazi Germany against Soviet Union while preserving its own liberty inside. Why waste such an interesting subject with a poor movie like this? Well, all the positive reviews speak about the original and rare war material (especially tanks), used in this movie. OK, if you just want to see some 1944 tanks running and fighting again, just go to a reenactment event. It's much more funny.

janne-ojaniemi 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.

Shaolin_Apu 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.