The Finnish Line: Movie Review

A worthwhile trip to Finland.

Hallmark Christmas movies tend to be at their best when they’re out of their comfort zone. For The Finnish Line, we travel to Finland for an ultra competitive dog sled race. While the movie paints this as a big, life-defining competition which I’m not sure it’s quite that big, it is at least real. Dog sled racing plus Finnish Christmas traditions plus double the romance equates to an enjoyable Christmas movie.		2024 Directed by: Dustin Rikert Screenplay by: John Bellina, Nicole Drespel, Andrew Gernhard Starring: Kim Matula, Nichole Sakura, Benedikt Grondal, Beau Mirchoff
Anya (Kim Matula) is the American daughter of a retired (and now deceased) former Finnish dog sled racing champion who lost in his final race. She’s mostly a typical Hallmark lead – a very determined, no-nonsense person who plans everything. Her career is dog sled racing – which we just have to accept because I’m pretty sure there isn’t quite enough money in dog sled racing to make it your entire career. Regardless, Anya and her best friend Elyse (Nichole Sakura) travel to Finland for Christmas and the big dog sled race. They stay with Anya’s cousin (Elyse’s love interest) and then make a whole host of enemies and friends within the dog sledding community. Within the friend category is Anya’s future love interest Cole (Beau Mirchoff). Apart from all the beautiful Husky dogs, one of the big draws will be the cast, a notably accomplished group for this film. Kim Matula is currently starring as Jane Curtin in the (potentially) Oscar-bound Saturday Night. Nichole Sakura is best known for Cheyenne on the very popular Superstore and here she plays one of the more delightful best friends the genre has seen with a fully realized character. Finally Beau Mirchoff from Awkward and Good Trouble to name but a couple of his notable roles plays a racer-turned-journalist who becomes an immediate compatriot and eventual romantic partner for Anya. I also think he was actually speaking Finnish in the beginning - his character is an American who moved to Finland when he was in high school (we are missing more of that backstory but alas he's not the main character). It is mostly well photographed, ignore the obviously CGI while she’s dangling from a cliff, with the small Finnish town lit up beautifully (and realistically) and the images of the northern lights also appear to be real and not computer-generated. The dog sled racing isn’t the most exciting part (hence the inclusion of a stupid and not suspenseful almost fall off a cliff), they also shoe-horned in a scene for the villain to give a sad story so everybody is friends, but everything else that makes up this movie is fantastic – Finland at Christmas and all the relationships (including an accurate definition of second-cousins, third-cousins, cousins-once-removed, etc, which a lot of people are uneducated about).

Want a different Christmas movie or just more holiday-themed movies? Holiday Movies


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