Land of Mine (2015)

• Year: 2015
• Released: 03 Dec 2015
• Country: Denmark, Germany
• Adwords: Nominated for 1 Oscar. 32 wins & 27 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3841424/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/land_of_mine
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/land-of-mine
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: German, Danish, English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Drama, History, War
• Runtime: 100 min
• Writer: Martin Zandvliet
• Director: Martin Zandvliet
• Cast: Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman
• Keywords: 1940s, beach, prisoner of war, post world war ii, land mine,

	7.8/10
	75/100
	92% – Critics
	88% – Audience

Land of Mine Storyline

In post-World War II Denmark, the Danish government puts their hated German prisoners of war to work clearing the 1.5 million landmines from the western beaches of the country. At one such beach, Sgt. Carl Leopold Rasmussen finds himself in charge of one such labor unit and finds they are largely all inexperienced boys. As the boys struggle to complete and survive their dangerous work, Sgt. Rasmussen’s hate for Germans gradually cools as he grows to understand the horrific situation these child soldiers are in even as the mines claim more and more victims.

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Land of Mine Movie Reviews

Grimm drama on the casualties of war

There’s a weird double edge sword going on here. Though I can’t blame the Danish for being so cruel to the Germans so soon after the war ended, it’s difficult in this PC world of 2017 to see this happening.

Denmark forces German soldiers to clean up their mess (A series of beaches infected with their land mines) before they can go home. Making this task even crueler is the soldiers doing it don’t look old enough to smoke a cigarette.

It was a very honest look at the aftermath of war. The Danish military were treating the German’s worse than dogs, though Germany deserved it for the part they played in WWII. Land of Mine is a focus on humanity as one Danish Commanding officer must find this with a group of German boys he commands like they were slaves

Land of Mine was at times hard to look at, especially when these kids were getting blown up. A little too real on how land mines work. One minute you’re there, the next minute you’re gone. Sometimes you saw the explosion coming, and then they surprise you with one you didn’t. It strangely added to the drama.

Land of Mine was an interesting look on what it takes to turn the other cheek and forgive the enemy.

http://cinemagardens.com

Great History and Drama

LAND OF MINE (Under Sadet) 2015

This Danish film is set just after the end of the Second World War. It tells the tale of a little-known bit of post war history. The Danish army garbs up several thousand German prisoners of war and puts them to work clearing mines.

The story follows a tough Danish Sergeant, Roland Moller, who is put in charge of a small detachment of young pow’s. The Germans are all young lads of about 16-17 who had been drafted into the army late in the war.

The young men are put through a quick course on dismantling the various types of mines. They are then sent off to various parts of the Danish West coast. The German’s had planted close to two million mines on the coast.

Moller puts the Germans lads to work clearing a nearby section of the beach. At night he locks the boys in a barn. The first several days the Germans are not supplied with any food. This of course affects their ability to defuse their quota of mines. One of the lads blows off both his arms off because of fatigue.

Moller might hate the Germans, but this is just murder. He hits a Danish Army base and steals some rations for the Germans. The Germans take all the abuse heaped on them by the Danes and the visiting British officers. Moller starts to rock the boat with his higher ups about this treatment. This just gets Moller in crap with the chain of command.

Several more of the lads are killed and more prisoners are brought in to take their place. Moller reverts back to form when his dog is killed running in a section that was cleared. He has the boys walk over every square foot of the section to make sure no others were missed.

Moller again softens when he returns from a trip to his base. He finds the Germans risking their lives to rescue a local child who had wandered onto an uncleared section. Moller promises the boys that they can all go back home after their section of beach is cleared. After the section is cleared, there is only 4 out of 14 lads left alive. Moller loads the survivors on a truck and wishes them good luck back in Germany.

He then finds out that his swine of a commanding officer, has assigned the 4 kids to work on another section of beach. This results in a heated discussion with the officer. The man tells Moller that as far as he is concerned, the more dead Germans, the better.

Moller, knowing it could cost him his stripes, hunts down the 4 boys at their new posting .Using faked papers he takes custody of the boys and drives them to within 100 yards of the border. He then tells them to hotfoot it for home.

The use of prisoners to do dangerous work was of course against the rules of the Geneva Convention. About half of the 2000 POW’s used in clearing the mines were killed or wounded.

As a military history buff, I was surprised I had never heard about this chapter of World War Two.

This powerful film is well worth a watch for those interested in the era. The acting, direction and cinematography are all first rate.

A previously untalked about and mostly unknown story about post WWII Europe and the German soldier.

The Nazis were evil scum….no sane person would deny this. And, considering all the evil they perpetrated, it’s hard to feel too sorry about the fates of many German soldiers following the end of WWII….but this doesn’t necessarily make their fates morally right. Most films never talk about the hundreds of thousands of Germans who were taken prisoner in Russia during the war and who mostly never returned home or, if they did, it was many years later. They also never talk about the SS soldiers who were starved to death because there wasn’t much food after the war and the Allies thought if someone had to starve to death, it should be members of the SS. Well, along this same vein, “Under Sandet” (“Land of Mine”) talks about German soldiers who were forced to dispose of mines at the war’s end. Many died in the process….and they had no choice but to do this or else. In each case, you can understand the decisions of the Allies…though it wasn’t exactly the moral choice.

The film begins with a Sergeant (I was uncertain if he was Danish or British) attacking a German prisoner after the war was over. While the victim was carrying a Nazi flag (so it was hard to feel too sorry for him), the attack was savage and rather unprovoked. Soon you realize this Sergeant is the same man who soon will be responsible for heading a unit made up of German prisoners of war who will be disarming the countless mines left behind by the German army. It’s obvious he’s an angry man and has little regard for the members of his unit. The irony is that how he initially treats these Germans reveals that he would have made a great Nazi himself! And, it’s sad to watch his mistreatment of the ‘men’ because many look like teenage boys–forced into the German Army whether they liked it or not. These are not SS murderers…but people and the choice of actors to play these soldiers made this very apparent.

So is the film worth seeing? Absolutely. Of course, however, you need to remember that with the subject matter the film is going to be bloody and depressing….and so it easily earns its R-rating. I don’t know how you could have made the movie otherwise considering the subject matter. It was wonderfully constructed and seeing the Sergeant change and become more human was a wonderful thing about the movie. However, exactly how accurate it all is, well, even today there’s a lot of debate and I read up on some articles that questioned whether or not the German conscripts were actually teens or more experienced soldiers. Regardless, it’s well worth seeing and worth remembering. One of the better Danish films I’ve seen…which is incredible as Denmark has been quietly making some of the best movies over the last couple decades with little notice abroad.