I'm not really target audience for this story of a young homosexual man who is serving his time in the forces with other young men on border patrols. It shouldn't matter of course since the film should be able to make me feel even if I cannot directly relate. Mostly it does this although it takes its time to make a simple point. The narrative is familiar, young guy is teased and bullied because the others either know or suspect that he is gay and this heads to a sort of confrontation when out on patrol. It does feel like old ground but it is still well done. The film contains images that highlights the sexuality of the place to the character of Michael, although never suggests it is coming from him or that he is creating it. This feeds into a mix of sexual tension and outright tension in a couple of places and these are done well.
The final scenes are where the film should deliver and it does, but not as strong as I would have liked. It tends towards the melodramatic a bit too much and I would have liked the dialogue and characters to be been stronger when it came to it. It does still work for what it is though and I did feel for Michael and his struggle, but in the end I didn't really feel like the film had done anything that I hadn't been expecting or hadn't already known. It is still nicely made and Schmidinger works well with the camera close to bodies as well as working in the darkness of the snow covered forest, just needed a little bit more in the material to go beyond the familiar.