Wednesday 4 October 2023

NZIFF 2023: Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2022)

As a group of Nazis retreat out of Finland, they decide to screw with an old gold prospector (Jorma Tommila) with a giant nugget.

Big mistake.





Styled as a western in narrative and iconography, Sisu is a straightforward underdog action movie. 

Jorma Tommila’s Aatami is your unstoppable hero, with a deadly skillset and superhuman will to survive.


The villains are a company of bandits, killing anyone who gets in their way for the hell of it.

 

There is nothing to Sisu.


This is not a historical movie - it is not interested in digging into Finland's involvement with the Axis. This is a movie about cutting a man’s throat and sucking on his exposed airpipe to grab a mouthful of air while you hide underwater from machine gunners on the surface. 


It is what it is - and it does what it does without wasting time.


Packed with gore and a deadpan sense of humour, it is a solid little genre flick.


Its familiarity is meant as a feature, not a bug - but I did find its familiarity, and simplicity, a little tired after a while. 



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