Hetki lyö

It’s funny in Finland, or Finns in Spain as wasted vagabonds who constantly drink because alcohol is cheaper and more available there than it is in Finland. This could, and perhaps should, have been something between Guy Ritchie’s early gangster films and John Waters’s adoration of the white rabble. Except that the film is tragically lacking in pace and humour to be Ritchie-esque and it falls short of Waters’s style because instead of his underground authenticity, Hit Big revels only in superficial melancholy towards the degraded mainstream pop culture of the past and, furthermore, its white-trash stylisation comes across as mechanical and forced. Unlike all real white trash, the central protagonist never runs his hand through his exquisitely styled hair so as not to smear his carefully applied make-up. But as an spectacularly ugly bastard child of grant initiatives for European co-productions, it’s a likable piece of work at its core. (02/18/2023)