Weekend Movie Bonanza — Heavy Trip
Hevi reissu (Heavy Trip), is a snide Finnish Indie movie about a wannabe heavy metal band, Impaled Rektum, from a small village in Finland.
Moviemakers were very familiar with the heavy-metal genre, scene, and type of characters who would be involved in a band such as this. The portrayal of the band members was loving and realistic.
The humor is gentle yet hilarious throughout. The band members are easily in character as young metal enthusiasts, but not ambitious. For the past 12 years — since high school — they have been practicing in the basement of a local reindeer farm abattoir, which belongs to the father of the lead guitar player.
Four longhaired heavy metal aficionados make up the band. Turo, the lead singer. Lotvonen, the guitar guy. Jynkky Patsi, the good-natured, slightly overweight, over-eating drummer. And finally, the brilliantly witty Pasi, a deadpan bass player who knows every piece of information about music and music trivia.
Turo, the lead singer, narrates the movie. Turo is a gentle, shy person who rides his ratty old bicycle to work (he works at a home for the mentally ill), to rehearsal, everywhere. Locals taunt him as he rides down the street. Turo tells us that he regrets not being able to come up with a smart retort at the time.
As Turo cycles to rehearsal, the countryside is beautiful, almost surreal, and to add to the feel, the occasional reindeer wanders past the camera, casually stopping in the middle of the road, staring back, then moving off slowly.
The rehearsal is in progress when Turo finally arrives. They talk about what it would be like to play in front of a real audience. Turo is not keen, but Jynkky wants them to play live. Pasi, the deadpan bass player, insists that to appear live, they must first write a song of their own. However, this does not come easily. Eventually, they have an original song. Jynkky records the session — now they have a demo tape!
A man in a fancy pickup truck arrives at the farm, and they all think he is a food inspector. It turns out he is a big promoter for a huge metal festival in Norway. He wants to buy a vat of Reindeer blood. Once they realize who he is, Jynkky rushes after him and gives him their demo tape, begs him to listen to it, so maybe they can get into the Norwegian Festival.
Somehow a rumor starts, and soon, the whole village believes that the boys will be playing in the prestigious Norweigan Festival. Suddenly they are regarded as local heroes rather than local weirdos.
It was a very well made and written movie. The acting was excellent, and the cinematography was outstanding. We loved it and would willingly watch it again. It was tremendous fun.
Note:
There is little information on IMDB on this project and its creators, which is a shame, because the film is a little gem. While watching it, we felt pretty sure that the film makers were giving a little nod to another Finnish film maker Aki Kaurismäki, who created a movie called Leningrad Cowboys go America, another little gem.
