Sisu

           As World War II was in its final days and Germany knew its fate, it retreated across Finland and scorched the earth behind it. One particular group of Nazi’s are making their exit through the wilderness of Lapland, with a small group of men and some prisoners. In that wilderness is a man (Jonna Tommila) who is looking for gold, having a horse and his dog as his only company.  Destined to run into each other, as their fate is about to change everything for everyone involved.

The man, who some call Aatami Korpi, has left the war behind and now is looking for gold in the wild. After a long search he has found it and packs everything up and heads to cash it in. Along the way he passes some Nazi’s  who have two trucks and a tank, but they let him go without incident. Soon though  he comes up to a second group of soldiers, these those are not so nice, and stop him demanding to know what he is doing. Of course they find the gold, but unfortunately for this group of Nazi’s, they have stopped the wrong guy. Korpi makes quick work of these fascists and continues on his way to cash in his gold. The first group, having heard the commotion, have turned back around to see what happened. Once the do, they decide to give chase to Korpi.

This sets up an interesting game of cat and mouse, but where the mouse has the edge all along and always seemly is leading the cat, or in this case the Nazis into his traps. Even when they do catch him and think they’ve rid themselves of Korpi, he comes back again, killing more along the way and only adding to his legend.

Written and directed by Jalmari Helander, who delivers a movie that let’s all of us live through Korpi as he kills Nazis in such a brutal fashion. This is the classic “one man takes on an army” story and where we in America have John Rambo, Finland has Aatami Korpi and they both just want to be left alone, but others won’t allow that. In the case of Sisu, it’s a man who just wants to take his new found gold and live a life away from this conflict, but when that conflict disrupts his plans, well Nazis got to die for that.

           Sisu is a pretty straight forward and simplistic action movie, that is divided into chapters as it moves along. It though is not all about the action, as there is plenty of tension that is caused by the different motivations of the opposing characters and what they are all willing to sacrifice to get what they want. Although the characters face many difficulties, and quite a few violent deaths, for the audience its nothing but a fun time. Peppered with some good humor and filled with plenty of classic Western aesthetics, which includes our hero being a man of little to no words. This was exactly what I wanted this movie to be, because when is killing Nazis never a good time?