minna

I really enjoyed this movie and would like to recommend it to others.

The story centers around Unto Helo, a young boy who has left the Finnish capital Helsinki for Joensuu, a place in the province close to the Russian border. He meets Lajunen the lead singer of a rock'n'roll band. The time is the early 1980's.

Unto claims that he has the best contacts in Helsinki and that he could help the band make their way to a gig at Tavastia, Finland's most famous legendary rock club. Unto fells in love with Noora and after a lot of adventures they all really end up at Tavastia.

Young director Perttu Leppä has created a movie with a lot of atmosphere, he takes his characters serious, the cast is completely well picked together. "The long hot summer" is a movie about growing up in the Finnish province and it is so well done that the famous brothers Aki and Mika Kaurismäki are no longer alone in putting Finland on the map of European and World cinema. I would like to give 9 out of 10 points.

"Hjärta av sten" (Heart of Stone) is definitely the worst Swedish movie I have seen in many years. We are used to the fact that Swedish crime fiction and movies have a remarkable international standard. Henning Mankell and Åke Edwardsson sell extraordinary well not even in Scandinavia, but in many other countries. Kjell Sundvalls movie "The Hunters" starring Rolf Lassgård and Lennart Jähkel has a well deserved IMDB-average of 7.3 points, I could name a lot of other examples, among them some features of the Beck-series with Peter Haber.

"Heart of stone" is the story of a Russian mafia killer who happens to be on the same plane to Stockholm as tough and brutal policeman Ronny Asplund (played by the otherwise brilliant actor Allan Svensson). A murder is committed by the Russian killer and thereafter we are witnessing an orgy of unmotivated violence among characters without any content. The dialogues are almost ridiculous; the decent colleague of inspector Asplund for instance always says something like "Please. Don't do that! No.", whenever Asplund is beating up or humiliating suspects involved.

Fortunately the film is over after 75 minutes, but even earlier you realize that every minute you spent on this was just a waste of time.

For the first time Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer can be seen in one movie together. And the screenplay is unfortunately a composition of many films in this genre that we' seen hundreds of times with lesser known actors. It doesn't take long that you suspect Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) lying behind everything that happens there, because he doesn't believe his wife. The perfect fassade with a congenious scientist married to a retired extremely talented musician (Pfeiffer) has something beneath. Spencer betrayed his wife a year ago and has killed the girl who wanted to ruin his career... Now he is willing to kill his beloved wife too, she is able to escape several times, but as an experienced spectator of thrillers like this you know that he will come back - as badly injured as he is. And of course she will win, escaping death and rescuing herself in the last second. Although the performances of Pfeiffer and Ford are really good, although Zemeckis is a well-known director with entertaining films like Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future and Forrest Gump - What Lies Beneath is nothing but a great disappointment.