Harjunpää & pahan pappi

In the world, Finns are known to be sluggish and calm people - and we see plenty of them in most Finnish films. Harjunpää ja pahan pappi is a nice exception, thanks to talented Peter Franzén and Sampo Sarkola, above all, whose characters' reactions to injustice and violence are not insensitive or arid. Although being on separate sides of the law, their "psyche" types are rather similar, but the reasons to act are still different... The plot has several twists and turns, some issues are explained via flashbacks; the ending is trivial, but not annoying, and when the credits appear you realise that you have seen a decent psychological thriller, in the line with good similar films from Sweden or Denmark.

In short, the film in question is one the best 21st century Finnish crime films. Moreover, I as a Finnish-speaker and having visited Turku/Åbo several times, had a nice joy of recognition.

I'm not sure why this movie got great reviews. It's a big budget film, that is for sure. For me, movies have to make sense. Even when Zombies are running around; the key is I BELIEVE it for an hour and a half. Even with the large budget, the great actors , kinda a cool plot, the holes were enormous. Way too stylized, like this movie is trying way too hard to be cool. For instance, the police department. Have you ever seen police men that look like the metal version of GQ magazine covers? No. Either have I. Other holes? No police officer has a radio. Like to call in for back up. Oh ya. They are finding out where the serial killer is- and- going after him alone, with never a call in to say, " hey. I found the most wanted man in Finland. Ya. I'm in his living room. He just disappeared somewhere in this house, and I'm gonna go try to find him." Nope. This detective, in his leather pants is going after him alone. The movie is filled with extreme examples of idiocy like this through out. Also- way too much character development. The movie is about a serial killer. Not a distraught wife ( who by the way, also makes no sense. She apparently is holding into a major two year grudge against her super awesome husband for being a total hero the night he was supposed to pick up his daughter at a concert and was a little late , which that also was never said, I just read it in the synopsis and was like " OH!!! That's why she was so mad!" ) the whole thing just wasn't believable, the motives, the arguments, the snobby daughter, the daughters vicious murderer, who was just some metal head on a RACE BIKE , who while hanging out with ten other complete metal head psychopaths , decided to rape and brutally murder the daughter at a concert, for absolutely no reason, and THEN, gets out of prison, a mere TWO years later. Then, the husband/ father / detective follows him and kidnaps him and takes him back to the exact spot his daughter was murdered, to kill him ( I guess?) but mysteriously, his faithful and beautiful partner ( who he never has sex with , even though his wife hasn't had sex with him since his daughter died, figures out by osmosis exactly where he is and what he is doing by finding an article on his desk about the release date of the daughters killer and goes and saves him from making a huge mistake at the last minute. Ya. Right. I pretty much think that everyone who liked this movie is a total moron, or was smoking something when they watched it. Skip it. And I love Scandinavian film. I was more than disappointed.

That's right, I saw 10 minutes , and i knew that it could not get any better,.... lack of expression, and wanna be action "thriller" movie,,,,

The setting reminded me a bit of a game called "Heavy Rain". It's not the same, but the vibe has some similarities. The main actor is really good and we have an interesting interaction between him and other characters. The main bad guy has a great motive: Plus he doesn't see himself as a bad guy (a thing that other movies have also explored).

Interesting themes (redemption, revenge and more) get tangled in a complex but still pretty reasonable scheme of things. It never gets too complicated and some people might feel this is too predictable (which it sort of is). Not everyone might like the way it ends, but it seems inevitable to me. A more than decent effort and a very tense movie

There always are holes in crime thrillers and police procedurals. A couple of them grated but in the main, they could be overlooked.

I'm not going to make this a long review. The film is not profound in any way and has enough of a plot, in fact a couple of strands, to hold the viewers attention. In reality, no serial killer such as this one would not have been caught before. But then, in films, murderers have the ability to disappear into thin air just like that.

I have to say the ending and final scenes were sick-making and saccharine but it's hard to see how else the scriptwriters could have finished on an optimistic note.

It's worth a watch to while away part of an evening. I have the series to look at next.