Admission: before I started watching, I thought this was going to be a documentary. I've listened to the Leningrad Cowboys before! Of course they were real! Except, of course, they're one of those bands that formed from being fictional first, like how there's recordings of the Archies or the Beatles. I was rapidly disabused of the idea that this was anything but a bizarre road movie, a sort of Americana by way of the Arctic Circle.
Between the atmosphere of cold that Kaurismaki brings to even the warmest scenes of this and the preposterous outfits and haircuts, this film has a strange clash of tones that pervades it in a pleasing way, making its humor seem darker even when it's…