Painting the Fearful Iconography
The delicious violence of the unusual exploitation war picture Sisu is profoundly nationalistic and is set in the 1944 ruins that dot the Finnish landscape during World War II. When the transformed, bearded Aatami Korpi arrives at the old river, he is in a different time and place and is painted with the fearful iconography of the seeker. He was wearing suspenders and a plain tweed shirt. With a horse and a small gray dog by his side, Korpi went about his routine, probably one he was accustomed to.
He knelt in the river and sifted the water with his pan of gold for pieces of gold. Korpi discovered a tiny nugget inside. As bullets and shell explosions pierced his historic spot, he started to excavate a hole. When he finally assaulted it, the golden sheen was enough to cause him to collapse and sob ecstatically. One man faces numerous evil German guys in the Euro-exploitation movie right from the beginning of the casting.
With a history lecture, the opening voice actor establishes the scene. Roughly translated, the title board also adds that the title references a Finnish word that means unfathomable levels of bravery and tenacity.
Perfect Cinematic Response
What matters most is that the Nordic country produced some strong, combat-proven warriors during the closing stages of World War II. For 90 minutes, the protagonist kills Nazis in the most heinous and brutal ways—crash, blow up, destroy, stab, shoot. The perfect cinematic response to our cries is a war movie. In Finland, Germans are still running amok. Even though a settlement was almost within reach, none of this directly affected a Finnish prospector searching the countryside for gold.
He knew he had discovered the parent layer when his pickaxe struck something sharp and brilliant deep within the soil. The man packed his rucksack with as many gold nuggets as possible and headed for a nearby town to keep his finds. He was unwavering, silent, and serene, almost by nature. However, the jagged scars covering his body and limbs revealed that he had endured a dreadful experience.
Recognizing the exploitation film, spaghetti Western, and 1980s action roots in writer and director Jalmari Helander’s horrific gore would be simple. The action movies and Sergio Leone movies owe a lot to the movies. Of course, Jorma Tommila’s calm male role is modeled after Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name.
High Body Count
He also had a peculiar resume. Tommila plays Korpi, a former special forces member who was very active in killing Russians during the Winter War. To extract retribution for the murders of his wife and daughter, whom they had mistaken for unstoppable ghosts, he had slain 300 of them. However, the brutal German company leader Bruno was unaffected by the information. Bruno believed that gold would be his ticket out of punishment in the future because the war was almost ended, and the scourge of war crimes was impending.
The film stacks up bodies as high as the average heroic film character counts during their struggle. Though, Sisu is more than just a silly bloodbath. However, they did not injure the seeker since they knew he would meet another patrol at the end of the path. The man did indeed come upon the second squad of soldiers. They erroneously believed that they would shoot him and take his loot for themselves.
The miner had different plans. What if he used some soldiers as human shields from machine gun fire before putting a massive knife through one of their skulls and blowing off the tops of the last man’s head?
Capturing the Desolate Finnish Terrain
Sisu made it clear that he had no interest in being amicable. He has a strong desire to eliminate the final antagonist from the movie. Every bloody set piece has a certain vintage maturity to it. It shares more similarities with Tarantino’s original inspiration, an Italian epic film from the 1970s, than with Inglourious Basterds. In any case, some of the changes can look highly familiar. For instance, it describes how Helander and director of photography Kjell Lagerroos captured the desolate Finnish terrain.
The environment is a barren wasteland littered with craters, destroyed villages, and corpses dangling from telephone poles. From the physical landscape to the means of communication, bullets, bombs, and land mines have decimated the entire country’s infrastructure. In the movie’s first scene, Korpi destroys the peace in the area around the river, but he does not do it to reveal his ideal body.
He is a native man who may be seen stealing gold to save one of his country’s few remaining resources while excavating a pit that resembles a crater. The Nazis are also depicted as occupiers. They are attempting to steal the sole treasure in the nation that has not been destroyed.
Ominous Tune
It is beautiful to promote a fervently nationalistic message by subverting the historical image of the seeker. The effort to recover his gold after the Nazis seize it leaves the hero with an almost supernatural level of tenacity coated with blood and muck and settles into the creases of his face. He struggles to cross a landmine-strewn road. Along with escaping the hanging, he cut open a man’s throat underwater to breathe through the escaping air bubbles and evade capture.
We can relish the blood and carnage that seep from every nook and cranny of the frame thanks to Korpi’s other strengths and tenacity, which make for excellent chuckles. Similar to the film’s ominous tune, it follows Korpi’s unrelenting yearning. The struggle of the Finnish women held hostages by the Nazis and used as objects of rape were also intertwined with the mission to recover his belongings.
Their freedom and fate are additional resources conquered by the Nazi imperialists, much like gold. Like Korpi, the women do not have many lines. Though, they are not flat characters. Even though they only serve as symbols, each character’s complex, tortured, and terrible past may be inferred from their looks alone without needing much backstory.
Serving as a Means to an End
In contrast to the film’s graphic gore, Sisu‘s scenes feature ridiculous actions that keep the action moving quickly. The movie loses appeal when ridiculous elements are added to the hero’s ability to live even after being hanged. The idea that Sisu is immortal allows the story to explore a variety of possible outcomes for the protagonist. In the end, it renders the entire movie completely absurd.
The movie had the same cliched dialogue, action beats, and pleasant yet imaginative assassinations that Hollywood used to be well-known for. The movie deviates from the cartoon regarding extreme violence, serving more as a means to an end before the main antagonist exacts his just punishment. Additionally, it is absurd and almost joyful in its nearly biblical anti-Nazi bloodlust.
Bibliography
- Bonaime, R. (2023). ‘Sisu’ Review: ‘Rare Exports’ Director Gleefully Takes Out Nazis in Bonkers Action Film. Collider.
- Daniels, R. (2023). Sisu Movie Review & Film Summary (2023). Roger Ebert.
- Topelus, T. (2023). Jalmari Helander’s extremely violent Nazi lynching film caused an extraordinary reaction in Hollywood. Ilta-Sanomat (in Finnish).
