The Mercenary Soldier, the 17th film directed by Anssi Mänttäri, was inspired by two articles published in Finland's biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. One of them was about a young father who had to clean up his daughter's date of birth that he had painted on asphalt. The other one was about a young man who seemed to have his life in order but nevertheless decided to go to Yugoslavia as a mercenary soldier. The episode in the film with a janitor making fun of a singing duet was also inspired by true events. According to the press release, these stories build into a meditation on "what kind of a man goes off to kill for money and what kind of a community can't stand to see the date of birth of a child". The same release described the characters of the film as a "cross-section of the clientele of any neighborhood bar", including both employed and unemployed people, singles and couples, young and old. "Mänttäri has a good ear for nuances of everyday speech, as well as for role games and the battle of the sexes", wrote Raimo Kinisjärvi in his review in Kaleva. "The only thing wrong with The Mercenary Soldier", wrote another critic, Pertti Lumirae, in Demari, "is that it doesn't meet the expectations raised by its title. The film's is a fine depiction of the everyday life in a neighborhood bar and its more or less steady clients' joys and sorrows. Mänttäri has no problem handling a group portrayal with lots of events heading in different directions, but when he should offer a motivation for the title character's (Ilkka Heiskanen) decision to leave Finland and head to former Yugoslavia as a mercenary soldier in the spring of 1994, he suddenly comes up with nothing. On the other hand, this apparent lack of motivation can be seen as part of Mänttäri's method and aesthetics, where things are shown as they are, and the interpretation (should there be need for it) is left to the viewer. In fact, in this respect Mänttäri can be considered the leading modernist of Finnish cinema, as one of his former films, Marraskuun harmaa valo (1993), also had similar solutions resisting the normal laws of logic." The film gathered only a few hundred viewers on its theatrical run, but on television it gathered a little less than 200,000 viewers on both of the times it was shown. The final shots of the film were made in Croatia while shooting the short film Romana.