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When we first see Sgt. Rasmussen ( Roland Møller ) in the opening moments of the Danish drama “Land of Mine,” he’s driving along in a Jeep with a look that recalls Woody’s Harrelson’s derelict cop at the opening of “ Rampart ”—jut-jawed, determined, a fierce, unforgiving gleam in his eye.

It is the spring of 1945. Germany has surrendered and its forces are leaving Denmark after occupying it for five years. Driving by a column of bedraggled German soldiers, Rasmussen spots one carrying a crumpled Danish flag. He screeches to a halt, jumps out of the Jeep and head-butts the man fiercely, screaming, “That’s not your flag!” And that’s not the end of it. While the dazed man lies on the ground, Rasmussen continues pounding him with his fists, till there’s blood all over his face, the ground and the flag.

Such a display of anger at the Nazi occupiers on the part of a Dane is understandable, but it’s only individual. The punishment described by writer/director Martin Zandvliet in “Land of Mine,” though, is collective. It involved using numerous German soldiers to clear hundreds of thousands of land mines that the Nazis had left buried along the Danish coast, resulting in the deaths of many.

Rather curiously, the film itself doesn’t say what its press notes spell out: under the international treaties of day as well as the 1949 Geneva Convention, this action—which was ordered by the British but carried out by the Danes—was a war crime. According to Zandvliet, it has never been dealt with adequately in Danish histories or public discussions of the period.

Granted, there are large and very obvious reasons why Nazis have been portrayed as the most brutal of human monsters in the popular mythology of the movies. But it was always a simplification that invited correction. In 1981, Wolfgang Petersen ’s “ Das Boot ,” about the perils of life aboard a Nazi U-boat, became an international hit in part by humanizing the servicemen whose lives it dramatized. “Land of Mine” belongs to the line of mostly European films that have continued that effort.

Its task is simplified somewhat by the fact that the Nazi Reich has been reduced to smoldering rubble by the time the story begins, and the Germans we see are scared, skinny kids drafted into the army near the war’s end—most look in the 15-to-17-year-old range. In an early scene, Danish officers explain to them that Denmark’s coast was the most heavily mined in Europe, apparently because Hitler expected the Allied invasion to come there since it was the closest land point to Berlin. More than two million mines were left behind.

How many have seen mines, the boys are asked. Only a few hands go up. So, the Danes provide instruction on this very perilous undertaking. It involves taking a stick and probing the sand till a mine’s metal bulk is detected, then gently removing it from the sand and defusing it by unscrewing and extracting the trigger. Needless to say, one wrong move and life or limb can be sacrificed.

When the story proper begins, Sgt. Rasmussen is in charge of 14 young Germans in a makeshift camp near a beach. (The press notes don’t say whether a group of prisoners was commonly left to a single Dane; it seems a little improbable.) At first, he seems as a fierce as he did in that first scene. He tells the boys there are 60,000 mines buried on a nearby beach; if they remove six an hour, they can go home a few months hence—assuming they don’t blow themselves up while executing their task.

In the tale’s first stage, the Dane treats his charges in a fashion that verges from screaming ferocity into near-sadism. We’re never told the slightest bit about what his particular beef against the Nazis is; we can just assume that as a Dane he has some serious ones. After practically starving the boys and lying to them about one of their number who was injured, however, he begins to soften, to see them as individuals and treat them like actual human beings. Later still, an incident that he blames them for sends him tilting back toward hostility.

These shifts of attitude on Rasmussen’s part can feel a little too abrupt and formulaic in enforcing the dramatic pivots of a standard three-act structure. Nevertheless, the film remains generally believable and consistently engaging due to the high quality of its execution. As Rasmussen, Møller, who has a chiseled Nordic demeanor akin to Michael Fassbender ’s, gives a terrific performance, both intense and carefully shaded. The German boys are very well cast, with young actors Louis Hofmann and Joel Basman especially giving the kind of striking performances that should lead to other films.

Zandvliet has said he and his cinematographer wife Camilla Hjelm Knudsen looked to certain films of the 1960s as inspiration for the look of “Land of Mine,” and the influence is salutary. With its muted colors and naturalistic lighting the film aptly captures the beauty of seaside locales that frame the human struggle at the story’s heart.

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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Land of Mine (2017)

Rated R for violence, some grisly images, and language.

100 minutes

Roland Møller as Sgt. Carl Rasmussen

Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Lt. Ebbe Jensen

Laura Bro as Karin

Louis Hofmann as Sebastian Schumann

Joel Basman as Helmut Morbach

Oskar Bökelmann as Ludwig Haffke

Emil Belton as Ernst Lessner

Oskar Belton as Werner Lessner

• Martin Zandvliet

Cinematographer

• Camilla Hjelm Knudsen
• Per Sandholt
• Molly Malene Stensgaard
• Sune Martin

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Review: ‘Land of Mine,’ an Oscar Nominee, Explores Postwar Perils and Ethics

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By A.O. Scott

• Feb. 9, 2017

In 1945, Germany ended its occupation of Denmark, leaving hundreds of thousands of land mines buried on the beaches of that country’s western coast. The dangerous job of clearing them was given to German prisoners of war, a punishment that seems at once intuitively fair and obviously cruel. That ethical tension — between justice and vengeance — is the subject of Martin Zandvliet’s “Land of Mine,” a tight and suspenseful film that is one of the five nominees for the foreign language film Oscar.

Filled with picturesque, windswept shots of sand and surf, “Land of Mine” focuses on the fate of about a dozen young captives, some of whom look more like boys than fighting men. They are billeted in a shack near a coastal farm, under the command of Sgt. Carl Rasmussen (Roland Moller), a Clark Gable-handsome martinet with a square jaw, a neat blond mustache and very little patience.

Mr. Zandvliet doesn’t flash back to the sergeant’s wartime experiences. He doesn’t need to, since Mr. Moller’s haunted eyes and weary countenance make it clear that his character has witnessed and suffered terrible things. In the first scene, driving his jeep past a column of retreating Germans, he pulls over to attack one who is taking home a Danish flag as a souvenir. Rasmussen’s hatred for his defeated enemy is boundless. “I don’t care if you die,” he tells his young charges, who work long, hazardous shifts on the edge of starvation.

Movie Review: 'Land of Mine'

The times critic a.o. scott reviews “land of mine.”.

“Land Of Mine” is about German POWs who are just boys and are ordered to clear buried mines from Danish beaches after World War II. In his review A.O. Scott writes: The film is an interesting addition to the growing roster of recent European films that search out the grayer areas of World War II and its aftermath. The director is less interested in the stark battle between good and evil than in the shifting ground of power and responsibility, and the way that every person carries the potential for decency and depravity. The ever-present danger of an explosion — and the certainty that someone is going to be blown up at some point — creates an undercurrent of dread that the director does not hesitate to manipulate. He takes a messy, murky reality and wraps it up into a compact narrative that is just a little too neat.

But the war hasn’t extinguished his humanity, and “Land of Mine” is partly the story of his awakening compassion. He requisitions food for the prisoners, leads them in a friendly soccer game on a stretch of beach that has been cleared of explosives and tries to protect them from the abuse of his superior officer, Capt. Ebbe Jensen (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) and other Allied soldiers.

It might be easier for a viewer to forgive the victors for holding a grudge than to forgive their intended victims, however innocent and vulnerable those young men may seem. Mr. Zandvliet stacks the deck in making Captain Jensen as cold and sadistic as any central-casting Nazi, and in portraying the Germans as terrified, ordinary kids. Their complicity with wartime horror lies beyond the film’s scope, which makes its exploration of postwar moral ambiguity feel incomplete.

Still, “Land of Mine” is an interesting addition to the growing roster of recent European films — Paul Verhoeven’s queasy “Black Book” may be the best-known example among American audiences — that search out the grayer areas of World War II and its aftermath. Mr. Zandvliet is less interested in the stark battle between good and evil than in the shifting ground of power and responsibility, and the way that every person carries the potential for decency and depravity.

He tackles these themes in a way that is both effective and conventional. The ever-present danger of an explosion — and the certainty that someone is going to be blown up at some point — creates an undercurrent of dread that the director does not hesitate to manipulate. He takes a messy, murky reality and wraps it up into a compact narrative that is just a little too neat.

Land of Mine Rated R for grisly and upsetting scenes. In German and Danish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

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Land of Mine Reviews

An explosive watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2021

For an examination of the affect that war can have on the human spirit, Land of Mine is a masterclass. It is essential viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 25, 2021

Land of Mine delivers an epic story.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2020

A positively terrifying post-World War II suspense work... You'll spend most of Land of Mine on the edge of your seat.

Full Review | May 4, 2020

As a character study set during unique yet harrowing times, Land of Mine continues in the vein of difficult yet important cinematic subject matter, reflecting the cruel effects war has on human behavior, no matter the side.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 5, 2019

A beautiful study on the contradictory nature of resentment and the importance of forgiveness. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 16, 2019

Concise, poignant, and captivating, Land of Mine offers a novel yet intuitive glimpse of a war we see quite often on film.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2019

This effortless picture is anchored by a barnstorming Roland Møller; he and his director juggle motives and expectations to alarming effect.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2019

The storytelling is simple but effective, with Zandvliet's script doing a nice job of establishing these young boys and showing the relationship that built between them and the sergeant.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 3, 2018

It's still hard to watch human lives end in clouds of black smoke. Even if you think you won't gasp... you do.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2018

Brilliantly played by a handful of young German actors. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 15, 2018

"Land of Mine" succeeds as both a thriller and as a portrait of the Rasmussen character, a man twisted by hate and loss during war, unsure if he can find his way back to humanity and compassion in peacetime.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 28, 2017

Land of Mine serves as a poignant reminder that revenge destroys more than it satisfies and that compassion aids the healing process.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 27, 2017

Director Martin Zandvliet combines gripping tension and powerful emotion in this accomplished war thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 26, 2017

It may be made with the subtlety of an unexpected explosion, but the aftereffects are harrowing and lasting.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2017

Land of Mines seems to want to tell us that when a war ends, another deeply buried mine also must be defused: hatred of the other.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2017

Land of Mine is a refreshing surprise that deserves its nomination at the Oscars simply by being humane, heartfelt, and shocking without feeling necessary to delve into the platitudes of glorifying heroics.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2017

It's a conscientious, handsome drama in the middlebrow humanitarian tradition, but it makes obvious use of the easy option: whenever a new tragic jolt is needed, a mine can go "boom!"

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2017

Land of Mine is small but powerfully formed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2017

Despite its grim substance, a crowd-pleaser of the traditional school.

‘Land of Mine’ Review: Danish Oscar Entry Recounts a Dark WWII Story

Denmark’s use of teenage German POWs to clear land mines makes for searing, timely drama

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.

A 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. 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.

While it’s a fictional tale, “Land of Mine” is based on history. Many of those who swept and cleared Nazi mines in Denmark were teenage boys. The use of children for WWII minesweeping was later decried by historians as the worst case of war crimes ever committed by the Danish.

Zandvliet puts a human face on the German soldiers, and that visage is fresh-faced, frightened and homesick. Their assignment is fraught with massive peril. If these soldiers make the slightest mistake, they will be horribly maimed if not blown up and killed.

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. 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 wrath felt towards them allowed their Danish captors to behave viciously, in the name of righteous anger.

Sgt. Carl Rasmussen (an excellent Roland Moller, “A Hijacking”) treats the young soldiers with unconcealed contempt. 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. “You should have told me I was getting little boys,” he complains to his superior. 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.

Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, “Land of Mine” is a powerful epic, superbly acted, tense and unsettling, but also poignant and occasionally tender. Moller plays Rasmussen with complexity and depth; he’s already won several awards for his performance in Europe, and deservedly so. He kicks off the film in a ferocious mood as he watches conquered German troops file past him.

He assaults one of them for a mild offense and unleashes a fury that seems to encompass the world’s enmity toward the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. “This is my country,” he bellows. “You’re not welcome here!” While the viewer recoils from his vicious attack, we comprehend what drives it, and that’s the beauty of this film: we understand all sides.

While the film lays bare the highly charged emotions in the months following the Second World War, it also feels timely in the wake of the presidential effort to ban Muslims from the United States. Humans are quick to blame and vilify, but when they get to know those they perceive as the enemy, matters grow more complicated. Rasmussen stands in for anyone who has demonized an entire race or nationality for the actions of a few. His emotional evolution conveys the glimmer of human decency.

The film’s only mild weakness is that a few of the 14 men in the squad are not developed fully enough. It’s not that that all blond Aryan soldiers look alike, but here it can feel that way. Perhaps it was Zandvliet’s intent to make several of the prisoners seem interchangeable, since that is how they might seem to their enemies, and to Rasmussen. (It brings to mind “Black Hawk Down,” where it was tough to tell one of the helmeted Americans from the other.)

But a few of the Germans leave an indelible impression: A pair of sweetly devoted twins Ernst (Emil Belton) and Werner (Oskar Belton) are perhaps the most memorable, followed by Sebastian (Louis Hoffman), who serves as the group’s unofficial protector and conscience. These young men are housed in a rickety shack, given minimal nourishment and tasked with rendering a lonesome swath of Danish coastline safe again. They must find and defuse 45,000 land mines buried under the sand, unscrew the detonators carefully, and gently lift them out of their hiding places. It’s an unimaginably dangerous assignment and we watch, with wracked nerves and heart in mouth.

The title, while easy to remember, is an unfortunate play on words, making this deadly serious subject seem almost jokey. The original Danish title is more apt: “Under the Sand.”

Camila Hjelm’s superb painterly cinematography renders that sand and the stark, grey windswept beach into a haunting character of its own. Zandvliet’s bleak compositions are particularly striking — soldiers lying facedown on the sand, inching along and fixedly disarming mines, their youthful skin almost one with the pale beach in contrast with dark warning flags dotting the landscape. His use of ambient sound, waves lapping in the background, creates a timeless counterpoint to their urgent work.

Sune Martin’s spare but evocative score adds to the compelling, emotional experience that is “Land of Mine.” While it is painful to watch the young soldiers face potential doom, the gradual redemption of their superior offers a palpable sense of hope.

Movie review: ‘Land of Mine’ revisits a brutal chapter in postwar Danish history

The Danish movie “Land of Mine,” which recently competed for a foreign-language Oscar, is the kind of film that becomes an instant classic: in this case, a World War II drama that manages to evoke the scope and solemn emotion of the best of that genre while relating an untold story with bold vision and assurance.

The action takes place at the end of the war, when German prisoners – most of them teenagers conscripted in desperation by Adolf Hitler – were sent to the Danish coast to clear the more than 2 million land mines that had been planted there. Against a backdrop of stunning windswept natural beauty, the fictional characters in “Land of Mine” re-create the meticulous, often deadly work of locating and defusing the buried bombs, which lie in wait with fatal certainty.

Recalling the excruciatingly tense action of “The Hurt Locker,” this thriller-cum-morality tale does a superb job of ratcheting up a taut sense of dread and anticipation. Even more effectively, writer-director Martin Zandvliet introduces a welcome moral argument, as the spiritual costs of postwar hatred and retribution take on grimly personal proportions.

The ethical dilemma of sending boys to do men’s work, to rectify a debt they incurred mostly as cannon fodder, is personified by the Danish military man who trains and oversees them, a hard-bitten sergeant named Rasmussen (Roland Moller). As “Land of Mine” opens, the POWs are subjected to verbal and physical abuse by Danish civilians finally venting their hatred for their longtime enemies. Rasmussen shares their contempt, but as the movie proceeds, he begins to see the futility and cruelty of an endeavor that assumes the contours of revenge at its most brutal, rather than rough justice.

The story of “Land of Mine” is a fascinating and largely unknown one, but what makes the movie special is Zandvliet’s command of space and visual language. Photographed by the director’s wife, Camilla Hjelm Knudsen, it’s a canvas of stark, high-contrast images of bodies against the white swath of Danish beach, the de-saturated palette and wide frame suggesting both inexorability and a sense of almost irrational dislocation: How can such a monstrous, misguided enterprise be transpiring in a place of such awesome, serene beauty?

As Rasmussen processes his own sense of professional and personal trauma, “Land of Mine” embraces similarly vast questions, none more vexing than the enduring prison of man’s inhumanity to man. Both grimly naturalistic and infused with classical values at their most thoughtfully composed, “Land of Mine” is epic but deeply intimate; elegant but tough.

Just when viewers might think they don’t make war pictures the way they used to, Zandvliet has come along and done it – even as he pushes the form forward with intellectual rigor, unerring clarity and stylistic panache.

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Film Review: ‘Land of Mine’

A little-remembered chapter from WWII's immediate aftermath in Denmark is dramatized in this potent and accomplished feature.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

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A little-remembered chapter from WWII’s immediate aftermath in Denmark is dramatized in “ Land of Mine .” Martin Zandvliet’s third directorial feature is a tightly focused narrative that can hardly help but build considerable tension and poignancy, given that it centers on Axis boy soldiers forced to remove still-live land mines that their side left behind at war’s end. Chosen as the kickoff feature for the Toronto Film Festival’s new juried Platform section — which Piers Handling’s stage intro defined as dedicated to “bold, innovative, challenging films from mid-career and emerging filmmakers” — it should parlay good reviews into decent sales among discerning offshore distribs and outlets.

When five years of German occupation come to an end in May 1945, Danish Army Sgt. Rassmussen (Roland Moller, “A Hijacking”) vents his pent-up rage on two unfortunates among the hoards of Nazi soldiers retreating homeward on foot. At least they’re headed away from him; not so lucky are the dozen assigned to his command for the next three months or so. Their job could hardly be more onerous, or perilous: neutralizing and removing some 45,000 landmines the Nazis planted on a local beach, among more than 1.5 million scattered along Denmark’s western coast in anticipation of Allied invasion.

So dangerous is this task that one of the POWs doesn’t even survive their brief training before they begin in earnest. Other mishaps will inevitably further winnow the ranks, though the Germans cling to the promise that if they survive, they’ll be sent home. Rasmussen makes no secret of his loathing toward the enemy combatants and his indifference to their fate — including their immediate starvation, as occupiers at the bottom of the priority list for scarce supplies. No friendlier is the woman (Laura Bro) whose beachside farmstead they’re camped in, though her little girl (Zoe Zandvliet) is too young to understand why these strangers should be shunned.

They’re probably closer to her age than Rasmussen’s, in any case: These Nazis are just boys who were recruited late in the war to bolster the dwindling Axis ranks. None appears to be on the far side of 20 yet, including natural leader Sebastian (Louis Hofmann) and cynical malcontent Helmut (Joel Basman). Others, like inseparable twins Ernst and Werner (Emil and Oskar Belton), look barely ready for high school. Even the hardened Rasmussen can’t withhold all compassion from these terrified, homesick youths forever, though at a nearby base camp his sneering superior, Cap. Ebbe (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), proves more pitiless.

There’s a faint sentimental predictability to the thawing of relations between captor and captives, as well as to the accident that refreezes that dynamic before a later redemptive turnabout. But Zandvliet’s script and direction avoid milking an innately loaded situation for excess melodrama or pathos, sticking to a discreet economy of approach that accumulates considerable power. Despite numerous explosions, just one is portrayed in gory detail, its horrific impact arriving early enough to effectively shadow the more restrained depictions of tragic violence that follow.

Though the opening and closing onscreen text underlines this obscure historical chapter as a human-rights case (it arguably violated international laws regarding treatment of POWs), “Land of Mine” is essentially apolitical, showing that at a long war’s end, both sides are simply embittered and exhausted. The German boys are sacrificial lambs very far from the criminal decision making of their Nazi superiors, while the Allied military and Danish citizens here struggle to regain any sense of empathy after five years’ occupation.

Though Zandvliet chooses to focus on a few principal personalities rather than dimensionalize all the characters here (several of the Germans never quite become distinct figures), performances are strong down the line. Very good assembly is taut while eschewing hyperbole, with notable contribs from editors Per Sandholt and Molly Malene Stensgaard; Sune Martin’s cimbalom-flavored score; and Camilla Hjelm Knudsen’s somber-hued lensing, which alternates between handheld immediacy and handsome landscape shots.

This accomplished feature should heighten its writer-director’s stature, though it does nothing to identifiably narrow his interests or style: A few returning key collaborators aside, there’s little here that one might connect to his deliciously prickly Paprika Steen-starring debut, “Applause,” let alone the glossy showbiz biopic “A Funny Man.”

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Platform), Sept. 10, 2015. Running time: 101 MIN. (Original titles: "Under Sandet" / "Under den Sand")

• Production: (Denmark-Germany) A Nordisk Film Production and Amusement Park Film in association with K5 Intl. presentation. (International sales: K5 Intl., Munich.) Produced by Mikael Chr. Rieks, Malte Grunert, Executive producers, Henrik Zein, Torben Majgaard, Lena Haugaard, Oliver Simon, Daniel Baur, Stefan Kapelari, Silke Wilfinger.
• Crew: Directed, written by Martin Zandvliet. Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Camilla Hjelm Knudsen; editors, Per Sandholt, Molly Malene Stensgaard; music, Sune Martin; production designer, Gitte Malling; costume designer, Stefanie Bieker; sound, Johannes Elling Dam; sound designer, Rasmus Winther Jensen; re-recording mixer, Lars Ginzel; casting, Simone Bar.
• With: Roland Moller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Laura Bro, Zoe Zandvliet, Mads Riisom, Oskar Bokelmann, Emil Belton, Oskar Belton, Leon Seidel, Karl Alexander Seidel, Maximilian Beck, August Carter, Tim Bulow, Alexander Rasch, Julius Kochinke. (German, Danish dialogue)

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Land of Mine review: when the shooting stops, the war begins

Martin zandvliet’s taut, oscar-nominated drama is economic, impeccably acted and impressively aware of its moral conundrums.

Roland Møller in Land of Mine

It's a small thing, but we should probably get that awful English-language title out of the way first. Under Sadnet (literally "Under the Sand"), a tense Danish drama that was nominated for best foreign-language picture at this year's Oscars, comes to us as Land of Mine . It concerns German prisoners of war clearing landmines. Get it? Was there nobody around to stop this?

Anyway, Martin Zandvliet's film, though shamelessly manipulative, proves to be a taut affair that offers an interesting contrast with Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk . Whereas that wartime drama, set a few hundred miles to the south, revelled in noise, effect and commotion, Land of Mine employs traditional character arcs and creeping tension. It is not always subtle. But it works.

The picture plays cleverly with our expectations by initially positioning the Allied commander as the villain and the young Germans as the heroes. We begin with Danish Sergeant Carl Rasmussen (the excellent Roland Møller) ripping his country's flag from departing occupiers and savagely barking them back across the border. He has been charged with commanding a platoon of young Germans as they pluck hundreds of mines from a long stretch of beach. He wallops them. He makes it clear he cares not if they die. He refuses to give them food.

We never learn what personal traumas have chiselled away all empathy, but he is clearly exacting some sort of revenge. The men are pathetic, frightened and largely compliant.

We suspect some softening will takes place. It does, but Møller is sufficiently in command of the role to make his eventual moderation seem believable. More problematic are the array of emotional cliches that litter the drift to understanding. Yes, when Rasmussen and the boys become friends, they really do play a game of football. There’s a little girl with a dolly. There’s a dog.

Land of Mine is so ramped up with tension that those compromises are unlikely to nag until after the credits have rolled. Economic, impeccably acted and impressively aware of the moral conundrums -- when do wars really end? – the picture is, despite its grim substance, a crowd-pleaser of the traditional school.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist

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Land Of Mine Review

04 Aug 2017

Land Of Mine

Surprisingly few films have focused on the repatriation and reprisals that took place on mainland Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Lacking the derring-do of combat recreations, stories about collaborators, refugees and survivors run the risk of trivialising emotive situations and demonising those exacting pitiless revenge on erstwhile occupiers.

In his third feature, Dane Martin Zandvliet is confronted with the prospect of sentimentalising the hapless German adolescents that Hitler had drafted into the Wehrmacht as cannon fodder during the last days of the conflict. Little more than kids caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, the 14 rookies dispatched to clear a stretch of beach of thousands of landmines scarcely deserve the hatred that paratrooper Sgt Rasmussen (Møller), superior Lt. Jensen (Mikkel Følsgaard) and widow Karin (Laura Bro) feel towards them. But, by failing to delve into their backgrounds, Zandvliet struggles to elicit sufficient empathy for their grotesque plight.

A fascinating topic is attenuated by conservative storytelling and sketchy characterisation.

It could be argued that Rasmussen is too blinded by rage to bother discriminating between the pragmatic Sebastian (Louis Hofmann), the resentful Helmut (Joel Basman) or callow twins Ernst and Werner (Emil and Oskar Belton). But his fury booms somewhat hollowly because we learn nothing of its causes. Has he been in uniformed exile or fighting for the underground for the last five years, or has he been a humiliated citizen mourning his loved ones? Similarly, while Rasmussen gets to know his charges well enough to steal food from the local field hospital and organise football matches to boost their morale, the audience is left none the wiser about their personalities and roots. Thus, when they are killed or maimed by detonated mines, their lack of empathetic humanity means they merely become statistics rather than tragic casualties.

Zandvliet also ducks many of the moral issues raised by this little-known episode in Danish history, which breached the terms of the Geneva Convention that had been signed in 1929 to guarantee the welfare of wartime prisoners. By rendering Jensen so callously cruel, Zandvliet makes it easy for Rasmussen to disobey orders and reclaim his essential decency by withholding the news that Wilhelm (Leon Seidel) has died of his disfiguring wounds and by helping the malnourished youths purge themselves with sea water after they eat animal feed laced with rat droppings. But there's no discussion of how such transgressions impinge upon Rasmussen's sense of duty and the obligation he has to his recently liberated compatriots to finish his task with the minimum inconvenience as they strive to return to normalcy. Instead of exploring the wider implications of Rasmussen pilfering scarce food supplies and prioritising his word of honour over the greater good, Zandvliet plumps for maudlin melodramatics involving his faithful dog and Karin's sad-eyed daughter.

Yet the sequences centring on the prisoners prodding the sand with metal rods as they crawl on their bellies are excruciatingly tense, especially when Zandvliet cross-cuts between close-ups of rusty metal and rapt concentration during the delicate unscrewing of percussion caps and the removal of fuses. Moreover, he wisely rations the explosions with a precision that keeps the viewer in a constant state of apprehension, even when the POWs return to their carefree childhood during those precious moments of relaxation when Camilla Hjelm's camera is allowed to roam over the dunes and tideway that the German High Command had been convinced would be the preferred Allied landing ground for a massed invasion.

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Land of Mine review – oppressively tense war drama

Martin Zandvliet employs ominous silence – and a few cliches – to tell the tale of German POWs forced to clear a million landmines from Danish beaches in 1945

D enmark 1945. The defeated German occupiers have retreated but have left a cruel parting gift – the beaches of the west coast of Denmark are studded with more than a million landmines . The British and Danish come up with a plan: use German prisoners of war, many of them teenage boys, to clear the beaches. This oppressively tense drama follows one squad of callow, terrified soldiers who have barely grown out of childhood and into their uniforms, and the Danish officer who grudgingly becomes their protector.

It’s a handsome film – the palette is all mossy greens and pensive grey-blues – but director Martin Peter Zandvliet ’s use of sound, or the lack of it, is his most powerful tool. Silence, but for the oblivious buzz of insects, is a vacuum, and tension floods in. That said, the cliched schematic of the war film – that any character who expresses hope about the future is doomed – holds particularly true here.

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Tense ‘Land of Mine’ tiptoes around moral landmines

An oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, 'land of mine' is nerve-racking and thought-provoking..

• Critic's rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The movie starts out starkly, with breath over black-and-white credits. The breathing gets louder, heavier – with anger, it turns out. When a face is paired with the anger, it belongs to a Danish soldier, observing with barely contained fury the disgraced rows of Germans marching out of his country at the end of five years of WWII occupation.

The opening scene of “Land of Mine” is a masterful manipulation of tension, a tension that doesn’t break when the soldier’s fists start to fly. This isn’t a war movie; it’s an after-the-war movie. But the battle lines are still drawn, and every ragged breath the film takes braces for an explosion.

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Literal and figurative explosions. Danish soldier Sergeant Rasmussen (Roland Møller) is tasked with clearing a portion of Denmark’s western coast of 45,000 of the over two million landmines buried by German soldiers during the war. To carry out the perilous task, he’s given a group of German POWs. They are numerous, and most importantly, expendable; nobody will weep if their limbs get blown off defusing mines.

Except these “soldiers” are children, or little more than. At first, that doesn’t bother Rasmussen. If they’re old enough to go to war, then they’re old enough to clean up after it. They are poorly provisioned and scavenge like rats. On the beach, they wriggle inch by inch on their pale bellies, poking at the sand with metal rods, rooting out hidden mines. There is little dialogue, less music – little to cut the suffocating tension, the constant bracing for an explosion.

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In their bare bunk, the boys share their modest dreams for when they return home: one wants to be a mechanic, two others bricklayers, another wants a beer and a girl (likely to be his first of either). They play what games they can devise with the meager resources available. They catch field mice. They lovingly name bugs they find in the grass.

They are, in short, boys – terrified, hungry, homesick boys who happened to be born on the wrong side of history, tasked now with cleaning up the deadly mess created by men. Rasmussen’s raw, animal hatred is understandable, given the atrocities he must have witnessed. And like any good soldier, he cordons himself off from sympathy, rebuffing the boys’ attempts (conscious and unconscious) at camaraderie. But as bombs go off and the toll of human suffering rises, every moment becomes one of complex moral calculus.

“Land of Mine” treads carefully, not just through mine-riddled sand dunes, but through the human conscience. That Rasmussen’s moral journey is a familiar one doesn’t lessen its impact. War always muddies our collective perception of right and wrong, and that well will never run out of powerful stories.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.

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‘Land of Mine,’ 4 stars

Director: Martin Zandvliet.

Cast: Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman.

Rating: R for violence, some grisly images and language.

Note: At Harkins Camelview.

Land of Mine (2015)

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Movie Review – Land of Mine (2015)

August 3, 2017 by Tori Brazier

Land of Mine , 2015.

Directed by Martin Zandvliet. Starring Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman, Emil Belton, Oskar Belton, Leon Seidel, Karl Alexander Seidel,  Maximilian Beck, August Carter, and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard.

At the end of the Second World War, young German POWs are made to clear up their country’s mess by Danish troops under British command, who use the boys to detonate and remove mines along the Skallingen Peninsula on the promise that they can return home once the two million or so explosives are gone.

An Oscar-nominee in 2017 for Best Foreign Language Film, Land of Mine is an intelligent drama, which ably demonstrates the savagery and futility of war – regardless of side, nationality or conflict. A small unit of teenage German POWs, tasked with defusing some of the millions of mines placed on the west coast of Denmark, and reluctantly commanded by Sergeant Carl Rasmussen (Roland Møller), is the film’s focus. Filming took place on the Skallingen Peninsula, a real-life location for thousands of these Axis power explosives, adding an extra layer of meaning to the barren landscape.

A dark and under-explored part of Danish and Allied history, Land of Mine takes the conceivable view that many of the German POWs forced to undertake this dangerous and overwhelming task were mainly boys, conscripted into Hitler’s Volkssturm in the final months of the war, and boys who were, therefore, ill-prepared, under-trained, and less culpable for many of the Nazis’ crimes. It has also been suggested that Great Britain and Denmark broke the Geneva Convention of 1929 by forcing prisoners of war (of any age) to do such dangerous work.

If writer-director Martin Zandvliet can be accused of over-simplification or bias in his angle, then it is quite plausible to suggest that he strove to make a comment on the complicated nature of all wars and all people – no participants are ever wholly innocent, in the same way that they are never irrefutably guilty. It’s refreshing (and perhaps educational) to see a World War Two film where the Allies are, for want of a better term, the “bad guys”, and the German forces are given a human and relatable face. These adolescents and young men are portrayed as victims of their time and circumstances, something that is poignantly highlighted by an early conversation over what they plan on doing when they’re back home in Germany – some are more hopeful of the future than others.

Land of Mine deals with a harrowing situation, although Zandvliet knows the best ways to emphasise the bleak and horrifying aspects of the mission without it being exaggerated or mawkish, thus capitalising on the audience’s emotions. The desolate landscape of beach and sparse shrubbery is equal parts beautiful and barbaric, representing a perilous job of almost-unconquerable proportion as well as a stretch of play area in one of the film’s scarce light moments. The music is equally sparse at critical moments, and when present the hollow, jangling piano notes reflect the emptiness and hopelessness of the character-breaking situation.

Without exception, the boys of the German POW unit are brilliantly cast. Each moulds themselves to their character and situation seamlessly. Among their ranks are the cynical and aggressive Helmut (Joel Basman), optimistic Wilhelm (Leon Seidel) and the twins – sensitive Ernst (Emil Belton) and protective Werner (Oskar Belton). Louis Hofmann in particular as the quietly driven Sebastian Schumann, acting as the de facto leader of the boys, makes an impression. His dogged determination to survive his lot leads to nicely underplayed and affecting scenes with Møller’s sergeant as he tries to broker first humane treatment and then a careful comradeship. Møller does fine work as a man hardened by the war and then softened by youth – but constantly struggling with his sense of duty. As both he and his commanding officer, Lieutenant Ebbe, remind the boys at the beginning: “No on wants to see Germans here. Denmark is not your friend.”

The unscrupulous Ebbe (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, who did sterling work as the unhinged King Christian in A Royal Affair ) is perhaps the nearest Land of Mine gets to a villain, displaying the same sort of mercilessness and dubious pleasure from power that is often seen in a typical film Nazi – but he, of course, is not, and it’s interesting to consider that his unforgiving nature could be attributed to a hardening from his war experiences and a fierce pride and protection for his country.

As a film about mine clearing, it would be easy to assume that the film will be mostly about waiting for mines to explode and anticipating the shock – but that initial assumption of shallow focus fades quickly into the background, playing second fiddle to the human drama on-screen. When and how the explosions inevitably occur, you won’t be expecting them, but they deliver full impact, pounding viewers emotionally. The grim circumstances of Land of Mine are never downplayed.

Land of Mine will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the other World War Two film of the season – Dunkirk – but there’s room for both. For all the pride and patriotism that Dunkirk may stir in you, despite its horrors, Land of Mine tells an equally compelling narrative. It is, however, a lesser-known story of the same war, from the other side and far less glorious – even if it is post-victory whilst Dunkirk was a major defeat. For an examination of the affect that war can have on the human spirit, Land of Mine is a masterclass. It is essential viewing.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Tori Brazier

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'Land of Mine' EW movie review

During the Second World War, the Nazi army planted two million land mines all along the beaches of Denmark. It was in anticipation of an Allied invasion along that route that never happened. In the aftermath of the war, German POWs were forced to clear the coast of all the bombs buried under the sand.

Under the Sand , in fact, is the Danish name of this disappointingly square post-war drama, which depicts a few months in the life of one such horde of POWs. No idea why its title was changed to the bad pun sledgehammer Land of Mine, but the film lives up to that leaden symbolism. The young soldiers are classic movie archetypes (the identical twin brothers, the emotional basket case, the quiet strong leader) and the plot is stone-faced solemnity. As the last trickle of Hitler Youth before the defeat of the Third Reich, the baby-faced soldiers are required to clear 45,000 mines from one stretch of beach, while a Danish officer (intense Roland Møller, who could be the blond brother of Mads Mikkelsen) looks on, not caring if they die from starvation, exhaustion or bomb triggering. His eventual thaws towards the boys and finds compassion. Because, of course, drama.

Yet that is a war movie cliché if there ever was one. And as stale as the bread that the soldiers are given to eat. Worse, Land of Mine operates on a very cynical logic that equated bombs being diffused with actual narrative tension. Obviously, anxiety is red-hot whenever the movie focuses tightly on a bomb that just might go off. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach and in the urge to close your eyes when a character is sloppily pulling the live charge out of a rusted mine.

But how is that challenging or interesting? Alfred Hitchcock was frolicking on this playground eight decades ago —and at least he didn’t mask the fact that he was manipulating the hell out of his audience. Hitchcock later regretted enlisting a little boy in his scheme, but writer-director Martin Zandvliet even includes into his story a little village girl and a pet dog, who each stumble onto the trigger happy section of the beach at different points. Those are pretty low blows. But audiences love to be worked over; people who hate horror films are quick to praise any prestige drama, even if it’s using the cheap nuts and bolts of a cheap slasher flick.

Land of Mine has been universally praised and is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars. Meanwhile, two of the year’s most genuinely exciting, provocative cinematic experiences—Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden , which wasn’t even submitted by South Korea for the award, and Paul Verhoeven’s Elle , which was submitted by France—are not nominated. Both titles might have suffered because of the very adult content in their stories. But they offer deep examinations of human behavior and, incidentally, a fantastic time at the movies. Land of Mine is essentially bomb porn. C

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Akira toriyama's post-apocalyptic sci-fi comedy gets a worthy adaptation..

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Consider it a cross between early Dragon Ball, Fallout , and Mad Max . In a world ravaged by war and natural disasters where humans and demons live side by side, water is a precious commodity. One of those humans, Rao, is a grizzled sheriff struggling to maintain security in his small village. The water-rationing and price-gouging of a cruel king is only contributing to that chaos, so a fed-up Rao sets off to find a rumored spring – and potentially quell a brewing human-demon conflict.

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The marketing (or a simple familiarity with Toriyama) may have you believe the protagonist of this tale is the spiky-haired purple demon Prince Beelzebub. He’s not: Beelzebub is a scene-stealer, and part of Sand Land’s core trio – but this is Rao’s story. Alongside the prince and his advisor, the elderly demon Thief, Rao comes to terms with his past and decides he's done fighting on others' orders and fights for the sake of all.

This is the balancing act at the core of Sand Land. On the surface, it seems like an all-ages comedy adventure – not unlike Goku and Bulma’s initial search for the seven Dragon Balls – with a clear quest, wacky villains, and cool vehicles. But while the tone is consistently light and fun, and Beelzebub is a hilarious little rascal obsessed with video games and making sure people know he’s the most evil person around (despite being a good-hearted kid), Sand Land goes deeper than that. Beneath the hijinks, there’s a complexity that could satisfy fans of both Avatar: The Last Airbender and the recent Pluto anime .

What’s your favorite Akira Toriyama project?

You see, before being a sheriff, Rao was a commander in the king's Royal Army, and he was involved in some major atrocities, the weight of which still haunts him. Throughout the first six episodes, Toriyama and scriptwriter Hayashi Mori explore the trauma of war and genocide, and how they impact individuals as well as entire populations. Corporate greed and even environmentalism are all expertly woven into the story in a way that never undermines or overcomplicates its message.

Nevertheless, this is first and foremost a short, tightly constructed adventure, one told beautifully through 3D animation. While 3D has a bad reputation, particularly in anime, Sand Land is a great case for the use of the format as a tool for storytelling, helping deliver stunningly choreographed fights that display Toriyama’s endless imagination. It also enhances the portrayal of the fourth main character in the story — the stolen tank that carries Rao, Beelzebub, and Thief around.

Toriyama's greatest contribution to anime and manga design are the pointy locks of Beelzebub, Goku, and their ilk, though his renderings of mechines are equally transcendent and important – and Sand Land pays great tribute to it. There are plenty of tank-centric action scenes, and close-ups of the intricate engine and inner workings of the tank and other vehicles, which are all animated with an eye for the smallest details reminiscent of '90s animation like Magnetic Rose and Ghost in the Shell .

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Sand Land is an expertly written and animated post-apocalyptic epic with exquisite mechanical designs and a poignant, complex story of redemption, featuring a bold new story by icon Akira Toriyama. Though be warned that the first six episodes are basically just a TV edit of the 2023 movie of the same name.

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