May 1945

World War II has just ended, and many German prisoners are deported to Denmark to remove two million anti-personnel and anti-tank mines scattered by Germany's occupiers along the country's West Coast.

Vast seafront beaches have been the subject of a paranoid mine concealment effort, and very young enemies, subjected to long sessions without food, are forced to de-mine. Revenge seems cruel, and Sergeant Leopold Rasmussen harbors deep contempt for the Germans after enduring five long years of occupation, hardship and violence.

The days pass with inhumanity and death looming but certain events will make the enemy, so close and in turn the victim of bitter resentment, acquire a new way of living.

The 'idiocy of war is the great protagonist of a film that tells a slice of true and equally unknown history.

The violence suffered generates the monstrous spirit of revenge in a feud involving a human too stupidly so.

One hundred minutes of tension, pathos, pain and senselessness in a context in which there is nothing but needlessly perpetrated horror.

The fierce face of war is mirrored in the portrayal of small adults little more than children who must pay guilt inexplicable to any light of reason.

A destructive work that of war requires inexhaustible energies in the face of which no catharsis will ever be a source of relief.

The ontology of evil, the absurdity, the harm, the torment, the hunger and the smell of death in a terribly engaging and incredibly effective film.

27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice