Battle for Finland

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.

As always when making a film out of historical events one is challenged with the task of trying to engage the audience, usually by adding characters or embellishing characters already available thus allowing the viewer to relate and or follow the characters throughout the film.

This film is bold enough not to fall for such obvious flirtations with the audience, it has little more story than the historical facts and the characters that appear do so just very briefly. All too briefly for anyone in the audience to remember little more than a name, maybe a rank.

All in all it becomes a rather confusing experience with names and ranks and orders flying around in the Finnish forest with the only exception of a Russian tank blowing up, or was it a Finnish tank?

I'm a huge fan of Finnish war movies. I went to great pains to import copies of TALVISOTA, both versions of TUNTEMATON SOTILAS, BEYOND THE FRONT LINE (a good, less-ambitious run-up to this film), and AMBUSH. Of all those, TALVISOTA is easily the best, though the 1955 version of SOTILAS is a close second. It seems to me all the others are in no way able to match TALVISOTA in terms of raw absorbing action, realism, and suspense.

TALI-IHANTALA 1944 fails dramatically to establish any sort of narrative. There are no characters and no plot beyond sticking to historic events. You'll see a 10-minute vignette such as that of a forward artillery observer who gets wounded. When the Russians overwhelm his position, he runs off into the forest and the film never mentions him again! He's not the only one - this happens to every character! There is no closure or any attention given to anybody.

The action scenes are plentiful and often exciting but feel sloppily, haphazardly staged, and often (in spite of lots of great period armor) quite cheap as well! The film even has to rely on stock footage for its portrayal of the German air assault later in the film. It makes you wonder why they even bothered including the subplot, as it adds absolutely nothing! We don't even get a sense of the damage being done or the amount of lives lost until the final shot in the film - which is just too little, too late.

I am quite happy that they managed to rig up a lot of historically accurate T-34/85s and even an extremely rare (nowadays) T-34/76. Also look for StugIII's, an ISU-152, and a KV-IS. Great stuff - too bad they didn't make better use of it. I'm a big tank/war buff and I still found myself drifting off to sleep during the battle scenes. The immediacy just isn't there - especially when there's only a couple dozen extras as soldiers (with no ammo packs or anything, mind you) when there should be thousands! Refreshingly, at least for American viewers like me who are fed up with CGI, there is very little computer-generated anything in this film. In fact, I don't think there really was any at all besides a quick flyover by a Soviet plane or two.

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.

If you are expecting your standard war film with a overly melodramatic love story plot line and all the other standard war film plot devices you are looking from the wrong place: Tali-Ihantala 1944 is more of a documentary trying to portray all the military units, which took part of the battle, which turned the war luck in Finland/Russia war to the advantage of Finland.

For a movie there is just too many characters in the story, which are left to the background of the greater drama of warfare. The film shows quite effectively how the military units work together and solely. There's very little sugar coating of the war, so in a word, you could have made three or four different war films from the material portrayed here in. The biggest issue here is, that this would have worked much better as a documentary series, with each episode concentrating on different units and key people. Now the film is too heavy, yet still too short.