N.B. 3* the for the boats and the 'surprise' ending!
As part of the Finnish KAVI ('National / Citizen's Audiovisual') Institute series, nicely giving a potential international exposure from it's accompanying English subtitling, this is a sort of sea bound 'cops n robbers', here being instead in a 'Coastguard n Bootleggers' version.
Now, if you like those old throwaway thirties films that often turned up in kid's Saturday morning film showings* - e.g. there's even an Enid Blyton 'helps out the adults' like, boy character in it - this can be fun: otherwise, pretty routine, except that if you also like thirties mini-ships (coastguard gunboat i.e. the VMV6 vessel of the title) and wooden boats then this is a treat with director Risto Orko's endless shots of them asail on the briny, plus having directed what surely was tricky (slippery!) around real island rocks locations chases at the close. too.
Note: well known early Finnish actress, Regina Linnanheimo may be the the radiant face on the cover come-on, but she's only merely a minor love interest dressing and certainly provides none of her latter trademark 'overboard' ( :-) ocular emoting; rather, compatriot Kerstin Nylander (as Lila) provides more delightfully here the over the top (yes, also 'overboard') performance as air headed love interest, instead.
To the the male leads, there's the typical Finn male brooding (dull?!), 'what's got to be done is gotta be done', characterisations, but a couple of 'baddies' stand out: one Eino Juhla rather amusingly with being a 'department store' cover (listen out for his amusing resigned closing comment to the Coastguard), and another (Sasu Haapanen?) as an almost effete English / US affected "All right" dandy, to keep you alert during its unwinding (even at my cut seen, 105 mins, rather repetitive at times, but that far shorter than the reported 128 mins: makes you wonder where the other almost half hour went
overboard?)
* And in which context is fully worth sticking with as you'll be confronted with a pretty good 'oh I didn't see that coming' denouement, that surely stands out as one of the best of the era.
