Sisu

Director: Jalmari Helander
Starring: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan, Mimosa Willamo
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 91 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Strong violence, blood and gore

When an ex-soldier who discovers gold in the Lapland wilderness tries to take the loot into the city, Nazi soldiers led by a brutal SS officer battle him.

Pretty graphic. Sorry, not very pretty graphic. Often ugly and brutal. For those whose sensitivities do not relate to graphic, give Sisu a miss. (And Sisu, we are told, is a Finnish word that cannot be translated, indicating absolutely strong determination of will.).

Opening information tells us we are in Finland, 1944, in the land of the Sami in the North, what we have called Lapland. The Nazis are retreating into Norway. The Soviet Union has a treaty with Finland to disarm the Nazis.

So, a World War II movie – but not in the traditional vein. Rather, most of the time it is in the open plains, then forests, and finally a bombed city. Sisu, in fact, plays like a frontier Western or, more exactly, a spaghetti Western. A boding, booming score with more than a touch of composer Ennio Morricone instruments. The central character, a kind of ‘Man with No Name’ whose name is mentioned by the Germans, is a loner prospector, a wandering, and grizzled old man with no money, and, just as it seemed right to call him the ‘Man with No Words’, in the last moments he utters two sentences.

Knowing the trailer for Sisu showed some gory violence, gashes and wounds, and a flying limb or two, it was surprising to read the review by veteran reviewer, Sandra Hall, who called Sisu a guilty pleasure. And it is; the violence with more than a touch of the cartoonish, our finding ourselves suddenly compelled to burst out laughing at what is grim stuff, but it is very much in the vein of explicit graphic novels, no holds barred. We laugh at the sudden, unexpected violence as if the writer-director was making a war comedy.

Our silent hero is seen gold-prospecting – and he discovers a huge vein. Then come the fleeing Nazis. We see our hero, one against 20, fighting truck, bike and tank. We discover the silent man is, a veteran commando, bereft following the death of his wife and children. He is one of the best commandos, known as an ‘immortal’. But, as one of the trafficked women in the truck says, he is not immortal, he just refuses to die.

And he is given plenty of opportunity not to die, being shot, stabbed, involved in fistfights, drowning, even hanged. The plot becomes more and more impossible, especially the finale in a crashing plane and (spoiler alert for those who enjoyed Dr Strangelove) and explosive finale.

Neo-Nazis beware – you will see your ideological predecessors humiliated and beaten (and they are certainly not nice people). Sandra Hall says Sisu is perversely entertaining. In summary, a macabre hoot.