Movie Nazis of the 21st century have generally moved on from the Ark of the Covenant–stealing baddies who took on Indiana Jones. Downfall chronicled Hitler’s last days in the Führerbunker. Natural Light pondered the feelings of genocide-enabling fascists during the second World War. Jonathan Glazer’s incoming The Zone of Interest, conversely, uses the home life of the Nazis to amplify every aspect of their moral degeneracy.
This storming actioner from Finland is a welcome throwback to simpler, shared swastika-slaying values. Pitching a Nordic Rambo against cackling, predatory, dog-shooting and treasure-stealing SS troops, Sisu is mostly here for gonzo Nazi killings with some insane survival set pieces, including an insane homage to First Blood’s mud death, thrown in for good measure. Mass murderer? To paraphrase Sly’s immortal killing machine, this is your worst nightmare.
Sisu is a Finnish conceit that, as an opening card explains, means “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination in the face of overwhelming odds”. That steely determination is embodied by Jorma Tommila’s Aatami, a grizzled prospector hacking away in remote Lapland. It’s 1944, in the days after Finland’s less savoury wartime collaborations, and the Nazis are retreating, kidnapping women and scorching earth as they go. Aatami, however, has “left the war behind”. Ignoring the planes overhead, he continues to mine, with only a horse and dog for company.
Suddenly, he hits what Jack London would have called the mother lode. Now all he has to do is smuggle the gold past the marauding Nazis.
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Unhappily, he and the loot are quickly intercepted by a squad of SS officers led by the pitiless Helldorf (Aksel Hennie), who are heading for the border with a group of kidnapped women. With a nod to John Wick’s Baba Yaga mythology, we’re told that Aatami was nicknamed Koschei the Deathless by his former Russian nemeses.
Jalmari Helander, who previously scored an international hit with his Santa-themed horror, Rare Exports, mines every gory set piece for squeals of delight and revulsion. Styled as a midnight movie, Sisu makes terrific use of limited military hardware and a forbidding Lapland landscape. In common with 1980s actioners, there’s additional fun to be had treating gaping injuries on Tommila’s hardened, wiry physique.
The abducted Finnish women (led by Willamo as the steely Aino) also turn out to have Sisu. Mayhem ensues.
- Sisu is in cinemas from today
