Miami

There's no greater crime cinematically (or otherwise) than portraying a simple plot seen a thousand times over in a drawn-out, self-proclaimed artistic manner, and thereby creating an excruciatingly dull compilation of unoriginal motifs, situations, and clichés with all manner of macros, low depth of field, silent understanding, and long takes. Personally, I often defend movie schemes or seemingly illogical decisions and situations when the movie is driven either by attraction or catharsis (apart from the fact that life itself is a repetitive extravaganza of schemes and illogical decisions, where this sentence itself is a scheme that can’t be logically applied in this case). But Miami has nothing. The characters are unbearably flat, their relationship with each other is defined by simple obvious truths and silent glances, vindicated by a kind of sisterly telepathic bond. A third of the running time is spent crying. The situations driving the plot are completely pulled out of the blue. The thriller element is so blind and lax (a seemingly suspenseful situation where the heroine forgets the phone she used to film a mobster in his living room is resolved by saying in the next scene that she just has to go fetch something and she just gets her phone like normal) that it can only be outdone by a brief romantic interlude that is terribly comical, not least due to the inane smile of the object of her love interest ("what kind of music do you make anyway?" "folk music with electronic themes" "you look so cute like that"). And it's a motherfucking two hours long, for fuck's sake! (2018.07.12)

This theme has been seen a hundred times before, yet I enjoyed this Finnish road movie immensely. One cannot deny the inspiration from the famous film Thelma and Louise, but fortunately, the filmmakers didn't stick to the same exact formula. I couldn't predict some of the twists and turns of the story in advance and the denouement remained a mystery to me until the last moment... I would also like to highlight the performances of Kristy Kosonen and Sonja Kuittinen. Both girls were very convincing. Moreover, they were a joy to watch, for example, during their seductive dances. The icing on the cake was the sophisticated soundtrack, which perfectly suited the sympathetic main characters. (85%) (2022.01.10)