A village pastor finds himself guarding a possibly valuable meteorite, fighting off those who covet it and questioning his faith and his wife — who is pregnant with a baby he’s sure isn’t his — in the dark and daft action comedy “Little Siberia.”
It’s built on a simple but twisty story that makes it dawdle at times. The pacing problems, lapses in continuity or logic and an anticlimactic finale strip it of some of the edge it needs to properly pay off. But it’s fun, with visceral and comically coincidental violence of a “nick of time” nature (like every episode of Apple TV’s “Dope Thief”).
This Around the World with Netflix film is from Finland, where the winters are long, alcohol is the historic coping mechanism and Russians are the same bad guys they’ve always been.
The remote village of Hurmevaara in the region they call Little Siberia may be about to have a change in its luck. A meteorite has crashed there, and it’s to be taken to London for testing, with theories flying around about it being worth €1,000,000. So even though it’s on display at the village (WWII-centric) museum, somebody needs to keep watch over it.
Let’s add that to the list of duties for the local pastor, Joel (Eero Ritala). He preaches sermons, runs support groups and counsels locals like the doom-and-gloomy Matias (Martti Suosalo) on almost daily visits. But as he’s an army veteran with peacekeeping service in his background, they add night watchman to his burdens.
A local entrepreneur, Rolle (Janne Hyytiäinen) envisions “tourists” visiting because of this event. But others may covet something that valuable. Some of them will be outsiders with Russian accents.
And then there’s the guy who “found” the rock. Or rather, it found him. Drunken, grieving ex-rally racing driver Tarvainen (Tommi Korpela) was in the middle of drifting his Mitsubishi Evo into a bigger rock in a suicide attempt when the meteorite crashed into the co-pilot’s seat. Taravainen figures that’s a “sign” from his dead co-pilot, and that the rock is his.
Pastor Joel has bigger concerns. His dance-teacher wife, Krista (Malla Malmivaara) is the village hottie who at long last is pregnant. But she doesn’t know her husband is sterile from a war wound and can’t father a child without a “miracle.”
So the millions of coincidences that shattered wherever that rock came from in space and sent it to Hurmevaara — whose name ironically translates as “charming” — might be interpreted as something divine “sent” to one or many of the residents there.
It’s just that the people who want to steal it are possibly armed and certainly ruthless. And accident prone. Pastor Joel finds himself threatened, bribed, kidnapped and injured, time and again, even as he’s distracted by what he is certain is a much bigger problem — an unfaithful wife.
The fun here is in the mayhem our not-wholly-hapless preacher finds himself caught up in — a robbery attempt and chase that ends with an explosion, a kidnapping that spills lots of blood and bodies that appear to disappear.
The preacher does a lot for this village, and gets little respect for it. Locals ridicule him to his face.
“So, your friend Jesus,” (in Finnish with subtitles, or dubbed), “did he walk on water?”
“Well, I wasn’t there for it.”
The presence of the reliably hulking Norwegian heavy Rune Temte (seen in “Captain Marvel,” and TV’s The Last Kingdom, “Time Bandits”) sets the tone for the sorts of comical villains our “tested” preacher confronts.
Ritala makes our hero credible as a man enduring the trials of Job, had “God’s Favorite” been beaten, stabbed, shot, etc. by people — some more colorful than others — who want a space rock.
Some elements and threads of director and co-writer Dome Karukoski’s caper comedy aren’t tidied up enough to follow, much less appreciate in their final resolution. But the summary parts are plenty enteraining, even if the whole doesn’t add up to all it might have.
Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, profanity
Cast: Eero Ritala, Malla Malmivaara, Martti Suosalo, Jenni Banerjee, Tommi Korpela and Rune Temte.
Credits: Directed by Dome Karukoski, scripted by Dome Karukoski and Minna Panjanen, based on a novel by Antti Tuomainen. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:45
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