Unknown Soldier (2017)
★★½ — Unknown Soldier (2017)
Aku Louhimies, a Finnish director better known for intimate social dramas like Restless (2012), took on something considerably larger with this 2017 adaptation of Väinö Linna's 1954 novel, one of the most widely read books in Finnish literary history. The source material had already been filmed twice before, in 1955 and 1985, making this a third pass at a text with near-sacred cultural status in Finland. Louhimies worked from both the original published novel and its uncensored variant, giving the production unusual scope at a running time of nearly three hours. Shot across Finland and partly in Iceland, the film was a major domestic event on release, recouping nearly double its eight-million-dollar budget at the Finnish box office alone, a remarkable result for a Scandinavian production outside the English-language market.
A-Z World Movie Challenge Finland The Unknown Soldier (2017) is Finland’s answer to “Let’s make a war movie so bleak even the snow looks exhausted.” I wasn’t sure what to expect going in (besides frostbite and existential despair) but what I got was a gritty, unflinching portrait of war that left me equal parts impressed and emotionally drained. This isn’t your granddad’s WWII film. There’s no heroic trumpet swell or noble speeches about freedom. Instead, it’s all mud, blood, and dread. The film follows a ragtag squad of Machine Gunners through the Continuation War, and it doesn’t romanticize a thing, every victory feels hollow, every loss cuts deep. The cinematography is stark and brutal, like the landscape itself is judging humanity’s poor life choices. Sound mixing gets a bad rap from some, but as a subtitle-reader (my Finnish is limited to “kiitos” and “moi”), I found the chaos immersive. Gunfire rattled my bones, distant artillery felt like thunder in my chest. The actors sell every ounce of exhaustion and camaraderie; you feel their hunger, their frayed nerves, their desperate grip on sanity. Where it stumbles though is if you’re not already clued up on Finland’s WWII role (spoiler: it’s complicated, involving both Nazis and Soviets), the film offers zero hand-holding. I had to pause at times and google “Wait, are they fighting with Germany or against Germany now?” A quick primer on the Continuation War would’ve helped, but maybe that’s on me. Still, this is war done right, no gloss, no glory, just the raw, unvarnished toll of survival. Not my usual cuppa, but I respect the hell out of its honesty. For a war movie skeptic, that’s high praise. (P.S. Finland’s World War II history is… wild. Quick recap: They fought the USSR, then teamed up with Nazi Germany, then turned on them. It’s like a breakup revenge tour gone geopolitical.)
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-06-19
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