Bene Cumb
Usually I am not into Finnish films with comic undertones as I probably do not comprehend the finesses of Finnish humour: I find it too straight and plain. But I as like crime films, Nordic ones in particular, I decided to watch Vares – yksityisetsivä and was pleasantly surprised. This first Vares-film has strong and logical plot, and despite strong references and links to Tarantino's and Ritchie's films, the latter neither became annoying nor seemed a poor imitation of big masters' ideas. The actors are good, characters elaborated, and the ending is versatile and includes unexpected twists. The 1 hours 25 minutes pass splendidly and make you want to see the rest of the Vares-films as well (although the sequels are seldom as good or better).
Janne Taapelinen
It is a Finnish film, but I watched it with my foreign friends. It was funny as a Finnish guy, I sometimes see the small problems of Finnish cinema. The problem being dialogue.But for my foreign friends this was no problem at all. They have no idea how Finnish people act or speak live. They also loved the exotic landscape, which for me of course had become too familiar.This made think, is this the same for every other nation? Do they see their films in a similar manner, and I looked into it. Apparently in the US most films before the late 60s have a style of acting coming from the theater. After the independent films came Hollywood took a more down to earth style of acting like from real life. Now it is the norm.In Finnish cinema you can still the heavy impact of the fact that most actors come from theater. Perhaps people are almost expecting it.However putting that aside it still a good detective thriller in Finland. I would recommend it especially to foreigners, as it was quite a hit in Finland itself. Also what I found funny in this film did not go down too well with especially the Indians (we watched this film as we have a club with my work buddies, where we watch films from our native countries). The two guys from India found the film almost too dark, I don't wonder why as we had to watch a bollywood film two times ago when we met. It was horrible...Funny how these cultural features come into play with films. I would hope that the cinema-complexes would show more foreign films. Perhaps they don't sell too good, but perhaps the consumer needs to become more aware. For example after this film some of the guys told me that my dark jokes were similar to what's in this film. Next time I'm going to show them some Kaurismaki... I mean this film is a little more commercial than Kaurismaki (he's style is unique, and the theater thing is not valid).Overall good film, and we should thank Markus Selin for his constant good work in producing these!
Lenitas
"Vares" was shown during Germany's "Fantasy Filmfest" - an international film festival of fantasy, horror and film noir - and I got to watch it. I'd been looking forward to seeing a Finnish movie with English subtitles rather than the other way round (yes, I'm easy to please sometimes) but in addition to being Finnish, the movie is also QUITE good! I didn't find anything to complain about, be it the acting, soundtrack or conversations. I had a good laugh, so did my friends, and the audience applauded in the end.The movie is exciting/tense, funny, well-paced, has some heavy action without being too violent, and you just have to love the characters.I don't know whether this was a one timer, since there are more Vares books, I hope they produce a sequel some time in the future.
SPaS
This film insists on hooking into everything that is wrong with Finnish cinema today and dragging them behind. It would really be easier to tell what they happened to get right with this movieediting and cinematography a total of 1 joke(s). Has to do with an 'adult' chocolate candy. And that's itDoes film school make you stupid? When there are like dozens or a hundred people working weeks and months on a rather big project, doesn't anyone, I mean ANYONE of them see that something is horribly wrong? Who the heck greenlighted that... that "script" in the first place!? Worthy a razzle, and on top of that the acting is so-so, 90% of the characters are stupid (stolen from better American films) and so on. A movie about a private eye that lacks suspense and especially ACTION. Not sure if there was a point though, cause I had a hard time sitting it through as it was, let alone start THINKING about it.Mr. Selin, Mr Mäkelä - stick to dramas if you don't once in a blue moon dare to try some SERIOUS man-to-men-combats, gunplay, explosions, car chases, wrestling with sharks and avalanches. I understand that to you they must be "subversive over-commercial and over-used Hollywood double cheese" because you try hard to be a "serious film-maker in the best traditions of the man-oriented intelligent high-brow European cinema" but hey, look who's making box office? Hint: financially back up those guys who made the straight-to-DVD "Ukkonen" a few years back. Minus the idiot director of course. See what happens. Here's a suggestion for the title and a taglineONE MILLION SQUIBS "Plot? What plot?"
AD
