I went into the theater to see Sisu more or less expecting a kind of Finnish Rambo movie, but with more saunas than the Sylvester Stallone films. On the whole, my expectations were fulfilled.
After the lights dimmed, a title card explained that there is no English word that is the equivalent of "Sisu" and that it means something like courage and resilience when things really get desperate.
It is 1944 and Wehrmacht forces are heading to Norway via Lapland. Unbeknownst to them, Aatami Korpi, a former commando, is out in the wilderness living a spartan existence with just a horse, some equipment, and a faithful hound. Korpi fought the Soviets who, despite their best efforts, were unable to kill him and so bestowed upon him the nickname "The Immortal".
One day Korpi is panning for gold and some aurous bits end up in the pan. This leads him to dig nearby where he discovers a vein of the refulgent metal worth a pretty penni. Or many markkas, if you like. After breaking up the gold and filling up his saddlebag, he heads out, to where exactly, we don't know.
Our hero encounters a retreating German platoon or whatever the Wehrmacht called a unit of a couple dozen or so soldiers. Despite the platoon's sharpshooter/badass/crazy guy, Wolf, wanting to kill Korpi, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Helldorf, lets him pass. So far, so good.
But then Korpi runs into a few stragglers from the platoon whose truck has broken down. They stop him and begin to investigate that saddleabag which appears to be bursting at the seams with something. One of the soldiers decides to kill Korpi but he dispatches them with relative ease, including one fellow who gets the Finnish equivalent of a Bowie knife through his skull which sets the tone for what follows. Shots are fired in the fracas which draw Helldorf's attention and he turns his platoon around to investigate.
They find Korpi and manage to take his gold but not his life. The rest of the movie chronicles his attempts to get his gold back.
It was a fun revenge thriller, I guess you'd say. Helldorf and Wolf are classic ruthless, sadistic German bad guys. In one scene, the former orders some of his own men to navigate a minefield in order to get the gold and kill Korpi. Many severed limbs spewing blood ensue. As the movie progresses, director and screenwriter Jalmari Helander ups the absurdity level. For instance, after our hero lights himself on fire and jumps into a lake, we find that he seems to be able to hold his breath while exerting himself for an inordinate length of time. He emerges on the far side of this lake pursued by one of the German soldiers. Korpi kills him and slings the guy's corpse over his shoulder to act as a shield just as Wolf opens up with the machine gun mounted on top of a tank. At another point, they capture Korpi and hang him. The pole he is swinging from has rebar pole steps and he sticks one into an open wound on his leg to take the pressure off of his neck.
The craziness climaxes at the end when Korpi finds himself in the hold of a cargo plane with no pilot that is in free fall. He straps himself down just before the plane nosedives into the ground. Korpi emerges none the worse for wear.
In addition to Korpi vs. Wehrmacht, the movie adds a couple of other elements for a little diversion. First is his dog. They get separated but the hound follows him. Will it survive? Plus, the Germans have several young Finnish women in the back of a deuce and a half and we are left to ponder their fate for most of the story, though they do get in on the action towards the end of the movie.
Despite the absence of saunas, this was a fun little flick. When the bad guys get killed, I felt a suitable sense of justice having been done. There was no character development and the movie traffics mainly in cliches. Instead, it was all about catharsis through killing when Korpi declares totale krieg on the German platoon. I was surprised to find that it was in English and also that it has stuck around Madison theaters for more than a week. Good to see a foreign movie find a moderately large audience.
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