Sisu

One day at the cinema in 2022 a trailer came up for the Finnish action film, Sisu, which I knew nothing about but it caught my curiosity and, after some positive reviews, I made a mental note to look out for this. It then sat in my recordings for quite some time until I was in the mood for what seemed like an ostentatiously violent action flick but I initial impression was wrong and this was more than I had hoped it to be.

Sisu follows an older Finnish commando, Aatami Korpi, who towards the end of 1944 happens upon a modest gold deposit in the wilderness. His fighting days are seemingly behind him but he hopes to turn in his fortune at a bank so he rides with his horse and dog through the war-torn land. However, he comes across a retreating unit of Nazi soldiers and it's not long before trouble quickly arises. 

Directed by Jalmari Helander, who made the forgettable Big Game with Samuel L. Jackson in 2014, Sisu was made on a modest budget of a mere €6 million but Helander and his team work wonders to give this film a visual flare and scope of something costing much more. It sure does help Helander's direction is on point while working with a perfectly suitable script and a great turn from Jorma Tommila in the leading role, who doesn't seem like the busiest man in the industry when looking at his film work. Nonetheless, Tommila brings a great presence to the character without using any dialogue for the most part. Aksel Hennie is also very good as the main villain even if it is an odd decision that he is speaking English throughout instead of German.

As for the action, it is fast, fun and very bloody. The trailers pipped this as a Tarantino style action flick but, while this is broken down into chapters like the famed director would do, it never really comes close to that in the final film and that isn't to the film's detriment. Helander keeps everything engaging and exciting without Sisu wearing-out its welcome thanks to some very good pacing over the tidy 90 minute running time. 

Sisu is a perfectly enjoyable action film and is an easy recommendation thanks to its swift pacing as we see what happens when you mix Kelly's Heroes with Mad Max. The end result is a whole lot of fun and apparently a sequel is in the works. I'm not sure where Helander and Tommila will take this next as I feel this works perfectly as a single film but I'll gladly keep watching if they can come close to the success they found here.