Terrific. From Denmark, a fact-inspired WWII aftermath story about some doubly unlucky prisoners-of-war, mostly teenage German soldiers, forced to defuse more than two million land mines, planted by Nazi forces on Danish beaches. before being sent home. (The bombs mistakenly placed there to ward off the big Allied Invasion that came ashore not in Denmark but in Normandy.) Here, a small unit of ten prisoners are trained and kept in line by a single Danish officer more than twice their age, charged with removing 45,000 of the bombs from beaches. The story arc doesn’t hold many surprises, other than who & when something’s gonna blow, but the situation & personalities have no trouble holding interest as anger and a taste for revenge turn to grudging respect and a certain kind of affectionate dignity that evolves over a series of two steps forward/one step back story beats. Exceptionally well acted, particularized and paced, director Martin Zandvliet refuses to sensationalize or oversell tense situations in a Hollywood manner, banking rather than abusing pyrotechnics, musical foreshadowing and CGI gore. (He does have a little girl wander into uncleared territory, but the set piece nicely dovetails into another tragic storyline.) Then wrapping things up with a narrative ellipse that wallows not. The film well received, yet underestimated/under seen.
DOUBLE-BILL: Probably best of the lesser known Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger films, THE SMALL BACK ROOM/’49, with what ought to have been a star-making perf from David Farrar as a British bomb disarming expert in 1943.
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