User reviews

I have grown up in Helsinki, which I feel will always be my home. That is why I watched this TV series with great interest. The book, which I still haven't read, is long and in my opinion the series should have been longer in order to incorporate everything. But maybe that just wasn't possible.

I'm still grateful for the series and think it was well-made and well- played. It showed one of the darkest parts of our city's history and the people who were young at that time. It was therefore easy for me to relate to the protagonists. I worked in the series myself for only one evening but would like to express a great thanks to those who really made it - the director and the main actors + all the others. My wish is that we will one day see a longer version maybe on DVD that would include possible deleted scenes from the series or from the earlier released feature film version.

I for once felt the magic of my beloved hometown while watching this series. When I see old photos of Helsinki or read about days gone by there is a certain warm and longing feeling that comes over me. I also feel it in certain parts of Helsinki where once I walked and will walk again and again and it's a very strong feeling. I wondered prior to watching this series if that feeling would come over me again while watching. It did - and with such an intensity that I'll read the book in order to get more of it.

Some people have complained about the violent scenes during the civil war. Should they have been cut? I don't think so. War is cruel and civil war in particular. I think we should all be told what happened and how cruel it indeed was.

A previous reviewer wrote that you don't hear any Finnish in this series and thus get the impression that nobody speaks Finnish in Helsinki. This impression is wrong, of course, since the majority of the people here are Finnish-speaking. But on the other hand, as local a film expert here has stated: While watching hundreds of other Finnish movies you will hear no Swedish spoken, which also gives a wrong impression of Helsinki.

This is an story of the very sad parts of Finnish history, the civil war of the country. I believe that most of the younger people in Finland today don't think about this timeframe(and that is in some sens good). But for me who enjoy history, this is an huge and important part of our history. To make approx 40 years of history into approx 2 hours of movie is a big challenge... The result is not bad, and some parts of the film is very nice made, but it haves also some situations or parts of the film that is not so good... feels like some parts are made in huge hurry or something..... and thats sad. This felt like an problem in the movie but if you look at the big picture it's still OK!

One bonus and problem is that is totally made in Swedish in Finland, and if you think the Swedish are only approx 5% of the total population of Finland today and approx 10% of total population during the historic time frame of the movie. And in that sense the total lack of Finnish in this movie is an little error in my point of view.