Sauna (2008)

It started a year ago. Maybe later actually. Jocke over at Rubbermonsterfetishism saw Sauna and said to me - more than once during a short period - that this was something I should watch. And he told me it more and more times, he called my mother, he stalked my grandma... he even claimed to be my son to be able to infiltrate my workplace to tell me to watch it. When he started to put photos of us together, torn into a million pieces, into my mailbox I had to confront him. But it got worse.

And then, a couple weeks ago, we had a booth at the Scandinavian Sci-fi, Game & Film Convention in Stockholm, selling The Killer Elephants on DVD. Everything was calm until he suddenly disappeared and came back with the Njuta Films release of Sauna. I tried to avoid it for a week, but this morning I sat down and watched it...

The year is 1595, a delegation of Swedish and Russian officials travels through Finland to divide the country between the states. It's been a long and hard trip and the war isn't far behind them. Erik, the older brother, is plagued by the memories of those he killed - but continues to behave like it's war. The younger one, Knut, gets more and more worried of his brothers behaviour, but tries to keep out of his way. Soon they come to a big swamp, and according to all sources no one lives there - until they find a whole village in the middle of it. Soon a girl, that Knut thought Erik killed, starts following them and soon they realize that something is terrible wrong there. Or maybe it's that weird sauna, standing out in the wilderness, that haunts them all...

While Sweden still is a desert when it comes to genre cinema our neighbours churns out classic after classic. Denmark has been a force of cinema since many years, and Norway and Finland is there with them creating imaginative genre movies which aren't afraid of being bloody and commercial, but still stands with both feet in the Scandinavian mythology. Sauna is clearly one of the best. A meditative trip into the wilderness of our minds darker areas. Don't expect hyperactive editing and typical jump scares, this is so much more and with an amazing ambition to create something unique and genuinely scary.

I love how the camera sets in on a character and stays there. Reads the facial expressions, the eyes and the charisma of the actor. With no hasty cuts, director Antti-Jussi Annila gives us time breath the characters, feel the story and let the atmosphere creep up on us. Some people say it's impossible for someone from another country to judge if the actors are good or not. That's of course bullshit. An experienced, thinking viewer have no problem reading the actors of the most exotic origin and Finland is just next door to Sweden and I'll tell ya, this is some magnificent acting going on. Ville Virtanen and Tommi Eronen is of course perfect, but the biggest surprise for me was to see Viktor Klimenko's name in the end credits - and I finally could put a name on that familiar face. Klimenko was, and is still, a famous Finnish singer with a Russian heritage. Damn fine singer to and with some of the most outrageous "manly" album covers ever. In the beginning of the eighties he got a religious experience and turned his career to gospel and religious songs and the last I heard of him was that he claimed to be something of a prophet, telling the future and having a close contact with that absurd being called "God". So I thought he was lost - but obviously not, because starring in a very dark horror movie is quite a different career for a former preacher...

Sauna, which is the only good title, is also known as Evil Rising - but don't be fooled by that. This is a lot more than a simple supernatural horror movie. This is a Finnish masterpiece.

Born American (1986)

Born American is a strange little movie. It's a Finnish action movie with Mike Norris (yes, the son of "actor" Chuck Norris) and directed by Renny Harlin. It was his first movie too, and it's probably one of his weakest too. No mistunderstandings here, I actually like Harlin a lot - even those movies that people call crap - and think he's an excellent popcorn-director. Nothing deep or thought-provocing in his work, but often very solid shallow and fun entertainment.

This movie was three weak things, and first being a trio of the most unlikable characters every to be written. I guess the meaning is that you should root for them, suffer with them and so on... but honestly, they behave so fucking stupid (I won't even bother to explain all the idiotic things they do, and think they will get away with) that it just feels kinda good to see them suffer. It could be the meaning, but when they'er acting like super-macho-american-action-machines, killing evil evil evil evil Russians everywhere, it's hard to see the irony or satire.

So, the second thing? Well, it's suppose to be an action movie I guess? But for being an action movie it really lacks action. Most of it is just a couple of whiny Americans crying prison and some scenes with really evil evil evil evil Russians doing evil evil evil evil things. Thank god (he don't exist, but it's just an expression anyway) we're treated to two action scenes which both are quite good. The first is a showstopper at a small Russian village with a lot of explosions, and the other is when they break out of prison in the end. Good eighties stuff, mucho slow-mo and explosions. Me like.

The third thing is the most pointless thing EVER to be written into a movie. The chess. It's a lot of talk about the human chess play, and we even get to see some short sequences from this cool gladiator game (the Italians would have created a whole movie around that concept) and everything, and I mean everything, makes us believe that this is something important and that there will be some fights there. But... nada. Nothing. It's just left there, somewhere in the end with not one single chess-fight. That's the most wasted opportunity in the history of b-action movie cinema. It could have been an excellent opportunity for a couple of juicy bloody kickboxing-scenes. But nothing.

On the other side, the two action scenes that are is very nice and good. The movie looks great and mixes the Hollywood-style with a moody European way of filmmaking. Effects, sets and everything else looks amazing. For us action-aficinados it's also very interesting to see Mats Helge Olsson in a small part as a priest in the beginning of the movie. For you who don't know how that is, he was the director of (among a few others) The Ninja Mission and Blood Tracks. He claimed to have made hundreds movie movies, but in reality it was maybe 14-15 and a few movies that never went further than testfootage or teaser-trailers. The rumour says he worked with the pyrotechnics on Born American, but he's not credited neither as an actor or somethings else - just a "Special thanks".

Born American don't have that much good stuff to offer, but those few details that work, works very well. But this movie also allowed Renny Harlin to move to Hollywood and make better and more entertaining things.

Really. And I'm serious about that.

The Last Border (1993)

From the finnish wilderness comes this violent and gritty post-apocalyptic western, The Last Border. Hated by most of those who have seen it, but loved by us that understands the mening of such a movie. It was directed by Mika Kaurismäki, brother of arthouse-favorite Aki Kaurismäki. None of them are appricated in finland, but in the rest of the world these guys are geniuses. When it comes to Aki he can be too pretentious, but that depends on the mood the viewer is in. Mika, on the contrary, is always just silly, arty-trashy fun for the mature part of the family. What the f**k, he’s the best!

It’s basically another "man with no name"-movie with a longhaired bum who seeks revenge on his fathers death (told in slow-motion flashbacks). What we can understand is that the terrible and dangerous gang-ledare "Duke", played by Jürgen Prochnow, is the murderer. He and his gang of motorcycle-madmen terrorises the post-apocalyptic landscape and has alos kidnapped a beutiful girl that our hero (of course) finds interest in.

After being hurt in a motorcyclechase our hero, soon named "Hawk", finds shelter at an old witch and her retared son. But it don’t take long until Duke and his gang of bandits is after Hawk...

This movie has everything an italian post-apocalyptic movie should have, except that it’s a finnish movie with mostly finnish actors and a score filled with finnish heavy metal. How strange it all can sound this is a very solid piece of entertaining cinema. Made in 1993 it was long after the big post-nukie-trend and it might be one of the reasons that it never got that popular. But with a movie with characters named Hawk, Duke, Borka, Skunk and so on I can understand why this haven’t been elected into the nuke hall of fame.

But it has one small problem. The middle of the movie is to slow. It concentrates the story on the relationship between Hawk, the girl and Borka. Not a bad thing, but it never works out that well. But the last 20 minutes it’s good old classic post-nukie again (with a italian western set up and also a small gladiator-fight). It’s also a very dark movie. After watching all the italian flicks with bright sunlight and sweaty closeups of mean men we get here a wet and rainy future with dirt, dirt and a lot of dirt.

I want to see this on dvd now and I think all you fans of these movies should be pleased after watching this flick.