"Cuckoo," we're told, is what they call disenfranchised snipers during wartime, perhaps finally shedding light on the bizarre imagery at the outset of Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite. One such individual, a Finnish soldier named Veiko (Ville Haapasalo), escapes the outdoor trap to which his compatriots, abhorring his pacifistic streak, condemn him, and wanders into the Lapland countryside, where he meets a kindly, possibly widowed reindeer breeder (Anni-Kristiina Juuso) who already has her hands full tending to the wounds of a Russian captain (Viktor Bychkov) sprung loose by fate from the shackles of the secret police. What sounds like a set-up for a grade-school joke--a Finn, a Russian, and a Lapp are stuck on a farm together--becomes the basis for, with apologies to New Order, a bizarre love triangle, one to illustrate that humanity runs deeper than a person's mother tongue.

The film's gimmick of all three characters never understanding each other because of the language barrier ("We have not had a cinema of this kind before," Rogozhkin self-flatteringly insists) succeeds at frustrating us but fails at meta-frustrating us, if you will, because thanks to the miracle of subtitles, we comprehend the entire trio at all times. ("I wanted to create the effect for the audience," Rogozhkin continues, "of understanding the characters without knowing the languages that they speak." Never mind that this proves less than a filmed game of Charades would.) Some of the miscommunications are solidly comic (a conversation between the Russian--thirsty for Veiko's blood, not just out of jealousy over Anni's swaying affection but also because the Finnish are German allies--and Veiko--apologizing for the crudity of his hastily-erected sauna--is a small gem of screwball timing), but the threesome's decision to keep talking to one another is a tad preposterous, playing most profitably to our "Three's Company"-whetted appetite for malapropisms, and The Cuckoo pans out as a facile, if entertaining, pro-globalization parable.-Bill Chambers