Timo Vuorensola
Iron Sky

«This year to save the Earth they will be your Nazis!» Here's the epically trash tagline (and with a slightly limping lexicon) that announces the 'triumphant' release of Iron Sky, a crazy film of madcap humor created by screenwriters evidently under the influence of psychotropic plants.

The director Timo Vuorensola, who despite the funny last name is not from Brianza but Finnish, actually gives us a cheerful and entertaining bad movie, stuffed with caustic irony and not too subtle satire. The plot already starts with a crazy and just enough off-the-wall situation, a grotesque mix between Red Alert and any random steampunk comic/game. That is: the Nazis, beaten in '45, are far from gone; they have relocated, via their retro-futuristic diesel-powered UFOs (ask Giacobbo what it is about..) on the Moon, or rather, on the dark side of the moon! And there they plan revenge, promoting the damn ideologies of the Aryan race and apparently assembling out of nowhere fortresses, mines, and combat spaceships that big. Not that things are going better on Earth in 2018: the outgoing President of the United States, an obsessed and nervous lookalike of Sarah Palin, invents everything she can to get re-elected, assisted also by her faithful nymphomaniac aide. And so the unexpected arrival of the Nazis will give an absurd and hilarious twist to the election campaign...

I mentioned bad movies because the level of cinematic approximation is remarkable; the screenplay, for example, often goes in circles and leaks more than the battleship Bismarck. The special effects work so-so: sometimes really surprising (considering the budget of only 7.5 million dollars), other times insufferably phony. The lunar settings, finally, are decidedly implausible and the film, in general, is somewhat rushed. But all this takes a back seat if we consider the comic verve of the characters and the improbable situations they protagonize.

As previously anticipated, Vuorensola gives his best in terms of satire and to succeed he spares nothing: notable is the parody of an election campaign that mocks Hitlerian rhetoric and iconography, as well as the depiction of the United Nations as a bunch of children. In this sense, the scene of the final brawl is simply epic. Epic like the space battle during which it is discovered that the MIR has been transformed into an orbital cannon (!) while the colossal Nazi spaceship Götterdämmerung takes flight controlled by none other than an iPad (!!) and the USA lead the comeback aboard the 'exploration' vessel (obviously armed to the teeth) George W. Bush...

In the end, boastful acts and over-the-top situations follow each other in a chain, moreover well served by an effective team of actors, including the idealistic (and beautiful) blond Julia Dietze, the ruthless hierarch Götz Otto, already seen in The Downfall, the statuesque Peta Sergeant, not to forget Udo Kier who with his crazed face plays the new Führer.

The director, however, does not limit himself to farcical and slapstick tones, because the film is shot very well and full of brilliant ideas. Timo also skillfully brings out numerous cinematic and historical citations, some of which are really well done and spot-on. And after a dazzling orgy of madness and fantapolitics proposes an ending to say the least surprising, disorienting in its bitterness and that if desired has several interpretations. One of which is that perhaps, in the history of mankind, absolute evil does not exist and that even without the Nazi cancer, the Earth is perfectly capable of ruining itself.

Pseudo-pacifist or pessimistic messages aside, Iron Sky represents a pleasant viewing experience, an independent product that, in part, exploits capital and ideas proposed by the enthusiasts and fans of the director. It's a film that may well not appeal (all in all it's a real mess), but undeniably: A- offers fun that 5-star Hollywood cinema has not been able to provide for ages; B- revives the wonderfully mediocre nature of certain historical bad movies that now seem ancient history. Like it or not, Iron Sky is a little cult, a caustic, cynical, and often witty view of one of the most absurd and original what if scenarios I've ever heard of.

And in the end, it's not so bad to see Nazis getting kicked in the balls (again) and the Yankees making a fool of themselves, right?