Quite an inspirational story from Finland, if you can "survive" the first half which was somehow confusing and without a clear message... real story told without a proper pacing and dynamics and lack of artistic direction will always backfire with blandness! That is what happened here, too... but because I love riding and horses, and I understand the desire and the passion to be back into the saddle - gave it 3 stars. Watchable and enjoyable if you don't expect too much!
5.6Keywords: paraplegicfictional biography
Plot summary
The feature film (One half of me) is based on true events and tells an incredible survival story of a Finnish woman. Jaana is a bar owner and a mother of two kids. Her spare time hobby is equestrian. Jaana lives together with a charismatic but short-tempered partner, Marko. Jaana's life is about to take total change of direction as she paralyzes in a severe accident.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Ilona Chevakova as Hoitaja 3
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU 971.42 MB
1280*534
Finnish 2.0
NR
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
from Finland comes the beating
Reviewed by
The camera is in focus, so technically it's a movie
Very minor spoilers and this is based on the life of an actual person, so you might already be aware of those plot elements.
In a way I hate to do this, because it feels sort of like attacking the subject of the movie, but that is in no way my intention. Someone with such a story deserves something better than this.
The moment I knew I hated this movie came quite early. There's a scene where our protagonist goes riding with a friend of hers. For some reason, in this drama movie, this is encompanied by music that feels like it's from a thriller. This was bothersome, but when that same mistake was done a few scenes later, I knew this is going to be very bad. There's a scene where the main character sends her children into the night to go to their grandmother's in anticipation of her partner beating her up. Yes, I'm not kidding. This is supposed to be a heart-wrenching scene, but we get this suspenseful music. This is one of those situation where I would gladly use words I'm not allowed on this platform.
The structure is also all wrong. The first act is too long, the second act is too short, and the third act shouldn't even exist. The natural ending point for the movie is situated in the end of the second act, where all the important plot elements are solved. Also, there's are subplots which the moviemakers clearly didn't know how to handle, so they are just set up and then resolved in a sentence or two later on without anything happening with them in between.
So, what's in the third act if the movie should have ended before that? Dressage. I guess someone thought you could actually make a mainstream movie, where the climax is dressage.