Young Pietari (Onni Tommila) is at the heart of Rare Exports, and he's the film's John McClane, the unlikely hero who saves the day with a great deal of pluck and humour. Living with his reindeer herding father in the snow-covered mountains, Pietari delves into books of folklore about the real Santa Claus, who was trapped in ice hundreds of years ago by unhappy Sami and is now about to be thawed out. As protagonists go, Pietari is one of the best, little Tommila is one of the best actors I've seen in anything, ever, fact! He plays world weary, cautious, terrified, courageous and confidence in ways that have you rooting for him from the first scene. The all-male cast around Tommila are great too, and are happy for him to be the centre of this crazy movie. Relationships are convincingly sketched, with everyone playing their parts straight, letting the comedy in the writing and the situations do their work.
I was worried that the movie would be gory and bloody, particularly since an early scene sees Pietari's father sharpening wooden stakes in a pit to trap wolves - I was praying that we wouldn't be subjected to anything impaling or impaled on them. Thankfully, most of the creeping horror is just that, as the tension mounts, and any violence mostly takes place off screen. There was no point where I had to look away, although one character does take an axe to the back of the head. What's more scary are the hordes of Santa's 'elves', old, bearded, naked men, who protect Santa and bring him naughty children. Rare Exports - whose title only makes sense in the last 10 minutes, of what is quite a short yet effective movie at 84 mins - sits neatly alongside Bad Santa in the pantheon of alternative, anti-Xmas movies. It's a comedy-horror classic.
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