Sisu (2023) – Golden

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 27th July
Seen: 23rd October

Some films are important art pieces where every little detail needs to be considered in a wider context, some films are prestige pictures that need to be given reference and explored in as careful detail as possible, there are even films that are family affairs that should be questioned on how appropriate they are to be viewed by children and if they can also be enjoyed by a parent who legally has to be at the cinema with their child or risk a charge of child abandonment… and then there’s films like Sisu that say “Hey, Nazi’s fucking suck right? Wanna watch an old guy shove a pickaxe in a Nazi’s piss slit?” and you respond with an enthusiastic and gleeful cry that can be heard from space because Sisu delivers on the pure Nazi-dismembering joy that everyone can and should enjoy.

Sisu tells the story of a simple gold prospector Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) who is trying to survive in the Lapland Wilderness in 1944, a time when notably a lot of Nazis were about, making it hard to live a simple life. Like prospectors occasionally do, Aatami happens upon a large gold deposit and wants to take it to town but on the way, he runs into a group of SS soldiers who have several women kidnapped and are destroying towns on their way out of Finland.

While the first group of Nazi Fuckrags (as they will be called throughout this review because they deserve as much contempt as humanly possible) let him pass, a second group of Nazi Fuckrags stop him and try to take his gold which ends in all of the Nazi Fuckrags being brutally murdered. Turns out Aatami is a legendary soldier who will stop at nothing to survive and can handily take out as many Nazi Fuckrags as the film is willing to throw his way.

To boil Sisu down to its bare essence, a single sentence description that’ll make you know what you’re in for, it’s John Wick but during WW2 and the bad guys are Nazi Fuckrags. Did you like John Wick? Do you hate Nazis? Congrats, you’ll love Sisu because it delivers on the exact thing you think it delivers on based on that description. Let’s be honest, Nazi Fuckrags are the perfect cinematic villains because you can do absolutely anything to them and no one worth a damn will ever argue with you on if they deserved it. Are they Nazi Fuckrags? Yes? Great, then they got what’s coming to them and oh boy does Sisu give them what they deserve.

Every single scene is a showcase for the stunt people who are doing some absolutely bonkers stuff that’s endlessly brutal and a joy to watch. Due to the 1944 Finland setting there’s really no need for them to just shoot each other, why bother when Aatami has a bunch of assorted sharp pointy things he can use on the Nazi Fuckrag pin cushions that keep getting in his way. It’s so over the top and insanely fun that by the time a battalion of Nazi Fuckrags are trying to walk across a field of landmines that they put down, you’re undoubtedly fully on board with the madcap insanity that’s going on.

It would be fair enough to say that Sisu could just coast on the bare minimum of “brutally slaughtering a bunch of Nazi Fuckrags” and call it a day, that’s a fine thing to make a film about and would be more than enough for anyone (because, in case I haven’t made it clear, I’m not a big fan of Nazi Fuckrags and enjoy watching their pain) but what elevates Sisu beyond just being pure pulpy fun is that the central performance by Jorma Tommila is insanely compelling. The writer/director has gifted Jorma with the role of a lifetime and Jorma absolutely takes it and plays it for all it’s worth. 

You instantly love this character, his rustic quiet charm is undeniable but when he starts his rampage against the Nazi Fuckrags you have no doubt that this was the wrong man to trifle with. He creates one of the ultimate badass hero characters in cinema, someone who feels like they could be dropped in any situation and come out absolutely fine. Even with minimal dialogue, you not only know about his wrath and his desire to just get by but his capacity for compassion and willingness to save those who need it. It even gets to the point where Aatami can defy the laws of physics and do impossible shit and you completely go along with it because they make it believable that there is nothing on earth this character can’t accomplish. 

Even without how fun the characters are and how glorious it is to watch them fuck up a bunch of Nazi Fuckrags, Sisu also just looks gorgeous. It feels like you’re in a warzone that just got evacuated and for a film with such a small budget it feels truly epic, every inch of the screen just reeks of the incredible devastation that was going around at the time. It knows when to pull the camera back and let you just see the scale of everything that Aatami is up against on his simple quest to get his gold exchanged for money… but also knows when to zoom in close so the audience can enjoy the gratifying image of a Nazi Fuckrag being turned into pulp underneath the wheels of a tank. 

Sisu is purely and simply a delight, it’s a glorious action masterpiece that ratchets up the insanity so gradually that you can’t help but just go along with the glorious madness that the film offers. Even if the villains of the film weren’t a bunch of Nazi Fuckrags it would be a lot of fun because it’s so well constructed that every scene just builds upon another… but the fact that you also get to enjoy a bunch of Nazi Fuckrags being turned into pink mist certainly helps. Without question a pure delight, would gleefully watch another dozen movies with Aatami laying waste to as many fascists as humanly possible.