There are myriad movies about World War II, but never have I encountered one able to generate such sympathy for German soldiers and contempt for non-Teutonic Europeans as Under Sandet does.
The film tells the story of German POWs who were ordered to clear landmines in Denmark after the war. These are not your stereotypically evil Nazi officers, but pubescent foot soldiers — if they seem like scared little children, it’s because they pretty much are.
The locals, military and civilian alike, treat the Germans like a bunch of red-headed stepsons — completely disposable, forced to 'practice' with real, active mines, and sent to a beach under whose sands there are 45,000 buried explosive devices.
"Assuming you deactivate six mines an hour and don't blow yourselves to bits, you'll be home in three months," tells them Sergeant Rasmussen (Roland Møller), whom we first meet when he’s bashing a surrendering German soldier’s skull in for carrying a Danish flag in his hand.
Under Sandet’s premise explores an overlooked aspect of World War II, but the film's power lies not in what it reveals, but in what it doesn't. At a certain point, one of the boys is unlucky enough to find a mine right on top of another mine; the poor wretch doesn’t live long enough to realize this fact, but his ignorance of the situation does not in the least lessen its impact.
Similarly, writer/director Martin Zandvliet has crafted a figuratively equally explosive palimpsest. Depending on how steeped the viewer is in the historical context, the Danes' attitude is petty at best and hypocritical at worst.
In addition to irony so subtle it’s almost subliminal, Under Sandet is a rather literal illustration of Hitchcock’s notions on suspense. This suspense remains effective even if we can predict some of the characters’ fates (for instances, one would have to be exceedingly naïve to see a pair of brothers — and twins, no less — in a story like this and expect them both to survive).