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Just when it seems the film might be growing predictable, it takes a turn and subverts our expectations much of the film’s power lies in these unexpected curves. “You should have told me I was getting little boys,” he complains to his superior. He oversees their dangerous land mine work in an extraordinarily abusive and cold-hearted fashion, but he softens somewhat as he realizes these soldiers are mostly scared, dutiful youths. Carl Rasmussen (an excellent Roland Moller, “A Hijacking”) treats the young soldiers with unconcealed contempt. The wrath felt towards them allowed their Danish captors to behave viciously, in the name of righteous anger.Īlso Read: Jack Nicholson, Kristen Wiig to Star in 'Toni Erdmann' Remake It’s vividly illuminating about European post-war attitudes: the Germans were the unmitigated villains, even these lowliest conscripted soldiers whose only desire was to get back home to their families. The powerfully suspenseful story focuses on group of 14 surrendered German soldiers - a few looking scarcely into their teens - as they work on a desolate, seemingly endless, stretch of beach. If these soldiers make the slightest mistake, they will be horribly maimed if not blown up and killed. Their assignment is fraught with massive peril. Zandvliet puts a human face on the German soldiers, and that visage is fresh-faced, frightened and homesick. The use of children for WWII minesweeping was later decried by historians as the worst case of war crimes ever committed by the Danish.Īlso Read: Academy Calls Possible Ban of Asghar Farhadi from Oscars 'Extremely Troubling' Many of those who swept and cleared Nazi mines in Denmark were teenage boys. While it’s a fictional tale, “Land of Mine” is based on history. Now that the war is over, the moral responsibility is obvious: It seems logical that the defeated German forces should take on this perilous task, since it was their country that laid the mines in the first place. After 70 years of World War II being mined for cinematic stories, it would seem as if no fresh stories are left to be told - but writer-director Martin Zandvliet has managed to unearth “Land of Mine,” set in the immediate aftermath of the war.Ī group of barely pubescent captured German soldiers are ordered by Danish authorities in 1945 to find, disable and remove a good portion of the 2 million landmines planted by the Germans along the coast of Denmark.