‘Sisu’ movie review: ‘Rambo’ homage lacks purpose
Jalmari Helander’s new film Sisu is an action-packed feature taking place in Finnish Lapland towards the end of World War II. It follows a gold prospector who must defend his recently struck treasure from a Nazi death squad and their sadistic lead officer. Whilst there are moments of action that shine, ultimately, Sisu falls flat in its attempted captivating a la Rambo and provides the purpose and meaning of its protagonist’s mission too far into its short narrative.
On the surface, as with many action films, the premise is rather simple. Prospector Aatami lives in the Finnish Lapland wilderness with his horse and dog while the World War II battle rages on overhead. He finds a huge deposit of gold, collects several nuggets, and heads to the nearest town to cash it in. However, a beleaguered platoon of Nazis comes across Aatami, they taunt him, and he becomes wrapped up in taking them out one by one.
Naturally, the Nazis believe this particular old man will be easy to take care of, but little do they know that Aatami is actually a former Finnish war hero who defended his family from the Russian forces in the Winter War of 1939. He’s nicknamed ‘Koeshei’, which means ‘the immortal’ in Finnish. Simply, Aatimi refuses to die, even though he comes closer than any mortal has done so before on several occasions.
Sadly, the reveal of Aatami’s past arrives slightly too late in the film for us to give him the reverence that he most likely deserves throughout. Occasionally, Sisu appears to take the form of a revenge film, but other than the killing of his horse and the fact that the Nazis have caused him some bother, there is little reason for Aatami to undertake his vengeance. He may as well have just escaped.
There are natural shades of Rambo in Sisu, but where the towns and woodlands of First Blood provide ample situations for Sylvester Stallone to defend himself with his bare hands, Aatami has a rather barren Finnish landscape in which to carry out his acts of violence. In that light, some of the tension that may have been provided by different kinds of cover, say the shadows of buildings, for example, are starkly missing.
Still, there are positive points for Helander’s film. The Nazis are clearly battle-worn and begin to understand that they have lost the war. The reason for their pursuit of Aatami and his gold is that they know they have lost the war and will likely be tried and hung. Getting their hands on Aatami’s treasure is likely to be the only way they might escape execution. This is a nice touch from Helander and gives Sisu at least a bit of the narrative weight it lacks elsewhere.
On top of that, it’s always refreshing to have a badass character as the centre point of a film like this, one that persistently defies the odds of death coming at him from all angles, especially one that never actually speaks. There are nods to the grindhouse stylings of yore with the chapter titles, but ultimately Sisu, with its particularly poor, almost stock, soundtrack, can tend to bore audiences, which is, of course, diametrically opposed to its very purpose.
