Sisu – REVIEW

By MARTIN FABINYI

There can be nothing more satisfying than watching Nazis get killed on screen.

Sisu (the unique Finnish term roughly means strength of will, determination) is a giddy, gritty, bloody triumph of a film, with Nazis dying in every way possible.

Directed by  Finnish writer/director Jalmari Helander, whose work includes the Samuel L. Jackson adventure Big Game, Sisu is set in the dying days of World War II, as the Germans are withdrawing from Finland during the Lapland War, laying waste to everything behind them and taking female prisoners to service their needs.

Ex-Finnish commando Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) prospects across the scorched earth for gold with only his horse and dog. Uncovering a huge seam, he packs his saddlebags and unwittingly heads towards an oncoming German death squad lead by the brutal SS Obersturmführer Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie), stepping between the landmines at every turn.

Aatami is soon held up by a group of soldiers who discover his saddlebags full of gold and prepare to execute him, but he swiftly kills them all. Alerted by the gunfire, Helldorf investigates and discovers the massacre and one of Aatami’s gold nuggets.

Helldorf’s second-in-command learns over the radio of Aatami’s past. After he lost his family while fighting as a commando during the Winter War, the vengeful Aatami became a legendary “one-man death squad” nicknamed Koschei (“the Immortal”). Helldorf decides to hunt down Aatami and take the gold, ignoring the orders to continue to retreat.

From this moment forward, Aatami is a killing machine. In a superhuman effort he dives into a lake, slitting the throats of the Germans who follow underwater and breathing in the escaping air from their necks. And this is just the beginning: when Helldorf hangs him, Aatami hooks his wounds into a protruding steel pin saving his life. Extreme retribution takes over, and when a German plane lands in search of fuel he takes the pilot captive, forcing him to fly ahead of the squad.

After much hacking and slaughtering, and with the liberation of the captive women armed to the teeth, Aatami completes his journey, with a wry comment (his only spoken words) as he cashes in his gold.

Jorma Tommila was the winner of the Jussi Award (Finland’s premier film industry prizes) for Best Actor in 1997 for his role in the film The Christmas Party, and has been described as the “new Rambo” for his leading role in Sisu.

The film debuted in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022 and was a hit when released in Finland in January 2023. It won Best Film and Best Actor at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, which is an annual film festival held in Sitges, Spain, specializing in fantasy and horror films, of which is considered one of the world’s foremost international festivals.

With the overall feel of an out-of-control video game, Sisu is a visually inventive, wildly enjoyable film. Always good to see Nazis die, preferably en masse

★★★★★

In cinemas July 27