This movie has gathered huge crowds in Finland, but as an outsider with only a superficial grasp of Finnish history you loose a lot of the points.
Focusing on a small Finnish bicycle unit as they penetrate into Russian held territory in 1941 the film has a lot of poetic moments and a high degree of tension in some scenes. Just seeing combat from a Finnish perspective is interesting for anyone brought up on mainstream American war tales, but there are problems...
As said in another comment, there is a lack of realism in the unit tactics displayed and some fighting scenes are ridiculous (especially the last unnecessary heroic showdown). Given that the soldiers portrayed are veterans of the Winter War they do *not* act sensible.
Well, that might be a minor point had it attempted a more thorough investigation of the motives of the soldiers and the inherent conflicts that must arise given the situation. Instead it centers on a banal lovestory as seen many times before in Northern European films. Mandatory nakedness, melancholia and a touch og golden light is the name of the game. Argh!
For those of you that don't know, Finland was an ally of Germany at this point, though they probably had no other choice, and the fighting in this film is not heroically defensive, but offensive. Nationalist sentiment was high at this point and just a tiny bit racist, ala the German kind. Had it more explicitly discussed these topics and the views of the soldiers in the unit, it might be more interesting for a foreign audience and in the end more balanced.
Instead it avoids discussing if there was a real need for the Continuation War and the huge drains it made on Finland. There are attempts at portraying conflicts among soldiers of different background, but no more.
As it goes it's mainly a crowd pleaser for the Finnish audience, showing that war is hell, love triumphs and the Finns were heroic, after all (which they were, but was it worth the losses?).
