He now spends his days panning around Lapland’s primordial bronze fields in search of the motherlode that might buy him a better life, and the bombers that fly overhead show him the same apathy that a drifting rain cloud might show to a rock. A grizzled old veteran who retired from the Nazi-stabbing business after the bloodshed followed him home (the character’s backstory is so basic that “Sisu” hardly bothers to fill it in), Aatami has lost interest in the war by the time the film begins. But that’s only because they force his hand. Then again, stabbing Nazis in the head might be the closest thing this planet has to a universal language.Īnd let’s be clear, the aforementioned man - a bearded gold prospector named Aatami Korpi, played by Jorma Tommila in a performance that feels like a cross between Daniel Plainview and John Wick, complete with an adorable canine companion - stabs an absolute scheiße-ton of Nazis. Like most of the words spoken in Helander’s unapologetic bid for international attention, this voiceover is delivered in deeply accented English while the barrier of subtitles may only be one inch tall, scaling it would force American audiences to put in more work than any other part of this film requires of them. “Deep within the wilderness of Lapland,” the narrator intones, “there is a man who has decided to leave the war behind him, for good.” Then - in a bit of brute-force storytelling so blunt that it lends this silly movie a vaguely mythic veneer - Helander busts out some trailer-ready voiceover to set his story in motion. First, Helander’s film kicks off with a definition of its untranslatable title (“Sisu” is a local term for the sort of impossible courage and determination that a person is able to summon when all hope is lost), and some maps to establish proper context for its setting (the year is 1944 and the Nazis are being forced out of Finland, but they’re wreaking as much havoc as they possibly can as they slouch to the border). “Sisu” wastes no time setting proper expectations for the smooth-brained thrill ride to come. ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Time Is of the Essence in a Sequel That Gets Old Fast Jackson vehicle “Big Game”), but “some killer, some filler” is enough to get the job done when that job is liquifying Nazis into geysers of thick CGI blood. “All killer, no filler” would be a wildly generous way of describing Helander’s latest bid for an international breakout (previous efforts include the fun Christmas chiller “Rare Exports” and the “fun” Samuel L. Straightforward and unpretentious to the point that its hero doesn’t isn’t even afforded dialogue - let alone a meaningful character arc - this is the kind of movie that starts with a tank fighting a gold miner before escalating to “Dr. If you think that sounds like a decent trade-off for 91 minutes’ worth of brainless midnight fun, then I’ve got some good news for you: “Sisu” does exactly what it says on the tin. A “they pissed off the wrong guy” movie so pure and simple that its sub-genre almost doubles as a plot synopsis, Jalmari Helander’s “ Sisu” is basically what might happen if someone transplanted “Fury Road” into Finland, lost 90 percent of what made that film into an unrepeatable force of nature, and tried to make up the difference by exploding as many Nazis as possible in outrageously violent fashion.
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