The Missile

2024 / Dir. Miia Tervo / Finnish / 114 minutes

Miia Tervo’s The Missile is an amalgamation of contrasting genres and tones. It takes on plenty of plot threads and attempts to intertwine them, connecting the personal with the bigger picture to inconsistent results. It’s at once a comedy and a drama, though neither intersects with the other. Servo addresses topics such as the Cold War and Finlandization but also the importance of self-belief, romance, and domestic violence. Oona Airola delivers a compelling performance, especially in her portrayal of a woman facing sexist discrimination and personal challenges, but the movie around her struggles to pick a lane. It’s neither hard-nosed enough to work as a legal thriller centred around investigative journalism, and neither is it light enough to convince as a quirky Lapland comedy. This indecision doesn’t compromise what the film is, but it prevents it from reaching the narrative heights it could have achieved with a more singular focus.