Sisu

Sisu is an entertaining B-movie from inhospitable Lapland. Stylish, bloody, funny, lively and even a bit cartoonishly fantastical. It’s not exactly innovative in terms of its subject matter, but it is unpredictable and imaginative in some scenes. The presence of Aksel Hennie as a top Nazi was pleasing. (05/19/2023)

Quentin Tarantino fans present… Once upon a time in Nazi-burned Lapland… When northerners make something like a Western, can it be called Northern? The initially low-key conflict between a lucky prospector who stumbles upon a hefty pile of gold and a beaten Nazi commando in a stolen Soviet T-55 turns into a bloodbath that should be taken with a grain of salt and treated more as entertainment than as a statement with historical value and philosophical insight. There’s a lot of blood and everything is filmed by fans of the genre with gusto, good ideas and a feel for visuals. There's no one well-known in the cast except for Aksel Hennie as the Nazi Obersturmführer. (04/23/2023)

Take out the resident. Lapland. Specifically, veteran Korpi, whose dog looks like a lamb, but he himself is no sheep. The trailer promised an enticing spectacle of grit in Nazi asses, but who could have guessed that’s pretty much all there is. Jalmari Helander blatantly steals from another thief (from the episode titles' font to the chunks of gold glaring into the face like an open trunk on Vincent Vega), but in the midst of physical anomalies, violence, blood, and slow-motion shots, I found that the style of exaggeration missed the mark quite a bit. Otherwise, I assume this film was an appendix to Finland's NATO application. (05/17/2023)

Ironically, the promising bubble created by the trailers bursts with the first action scene. The Tarantino-like titles, chapter divisions and a would-be spaghetti western atmosphere are unfortunately not enough to turn a boy's foolishness into a real film. I found Sisu surprisingly boring and most of all he struck me as a Finnish version of Machete, including the feeling that it shouldn’t have been more than a trailer. (04/28/2023)

The creators seem to have experimented with some unearthly psychedelics, because this supposed Tarantino-esque film set during World War II turned out to be absolutely insane. Fortunately, Sisu offers a brutal and visually striking spectacle from the Finnish plains, which we don’t get to witness every day. The main character doesn’t speak much (his first and last words come right at the end); instead, his actions do the talking. And those actions have a lot to say!... The action is over the top, completely ignoring any conventional modesty. Some sequences even stretch logic to the point where the poor guy might never recover :D (the scene in the river, the hanging, the ending with the airplane, etc.). Even for me, it was too much (and I’ve seen quite a lot in my relatively short career as a reviewer, I’ll be honest). But as I said, it does have a certain flair. So, leave your brain at home and head to the movie theater. For me, it’s 6.5/10. (04/23/2023)