Excellent Finnish War Movie!

[Cosmoline]

I just saw "The Ambush" on DVD:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162625/

http://www.bestprices.com/cgi-bin/vlink/658769024432IE.html

It's set during the Continuation War, and has some of the most amazingly realistic (if not 100% accurate) depictions of WWII era hardware I've ever seen. There are Mosin-Nagants of all stripes, SVT's, Lahti pistols, Nagant "Ivan" revolvers, PPsH's, Suomis, Lahti-Saloranta LMG's, and array of uniforms, trucks, tanks, and all sorts of great stuff. The film itself is beautiful and brutal. Absolutely a better war movie than "Enemy at the Gates," and a better Mosin movie to boot.

The film take some license with some of the combat scenes, but then again in real life Finnish soldiers did things at least as amazing.

 

[Oleg Volk]

Splendid movie, much more impressive than its low budget would suggest. Great acting and music, very realistic depiction of the area (which which I am familiar from way back in the USSR). Highly recommended! Thanks to hso for lending me the DVD.

 

[Cosmoline]

I really appreciated how understated the film was for a war movie. There was good action, but a lot less overacting and chest pounding than in many US war movies. Those Finns were tough customers.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Outstanding! I've been wanting to find a film about the Finnish/Soviet wars for quite some time now, thanks for the recc. Being an American, I have only a limited view of other nation's wars, so foreign films can be very historically broadening in that respect. I'd read the book "The Winter War" and was really amazed by the creativity and determination shown by the Finns.

For fans of such movies, covering wars/campaigns that don't get much press in the U.S., I'd also reccommend "The Lighthorsemen", which covers the WWI campaigns fought by Aussie and New Zealand troops in the Middle East.

If anyone can also reccommend any good movies to cover any of the following wars, it'd be much appreciated:

--The Italo-Ethiop wars (any of them)
--The Rhodesian War
--Any of several Indian Mutinies, Sepoy Rebellions, etc. against the Brits
--The Boxer Rebellion

Thanks -MV

 

[Cosmoline]

"The Lighthorsemen" is indeed a great movie. Lots of SMLE vs. Turkish Mauser action, and some very creative battle scenes. The detail is so good in one scene you can see that the Turkish officer has failed to instruct his men to lower their tangents, so they're all still shooting with the tangents out at about 800 meters as the Aussies charge in on horseback--sending the bullets into the blue sky!

--The Italo-Ethiop wars (any of them)-- I would suggest "The Lion of the Desert". It's not about Ethiopia but rather about the Italian invasion of Libya. It includes a lot of VERY outragous early fascist Italian uniforms (some look like Robin Hood) and some cool shots of early tanks. The Italians were actually at the cutting edge of military technology at the time.