A lean, mean Nazi-killing machine, brutal, bloody 'Sisu' speaks the language of violence. – Photos: Sony Picture Malaysia
A lean, mean Nazi-killing machine, Sisu is a brutal, bloody fantasy built for maximum fanboy thrills.
Jorma Tommila is Aatami Korpi, a one-man death squad who wanders the Finnish countryside killing Nazis in the waning days of World War II.
It's not that he sets out to kill them, dude is minding his own business when he hits the jackpot by literally striking gold in the ground. But on his way to turn that stash into cash, he crosses paths with a squadron of Nazis, who choose the wrong guy's gold to try to make their own.
Sure hope some Nazis won't try to steal this gold from me...
Turns out Korpi has a bit of a history, and he's known in almost mythical terms as Koshi, The Immortal, who is credited with 300 Russian kills in the days of the Winter War. And now he's after the Nazis, and he's got no shortage of creative ways to maim, murder and harm them.
Neither does writer-director Jalmari Helander, who lets his hero blow up Nazis with land mines, slash their throats underwater and strap them to bombs, and since they're Nazis, the carnage knows no mercy.
Oh look, more Nazi fodder to be killed.
It becomes the movie's language, since Korpi is an all but silent killer, barely letting out a grunt unless he needs to. And he plays up to his Immortal nickname, escaping and evading death in any number of ways, including somehow surviving a hanging, the science behind which is a bit cloudy.
No matter. Helander takes a Rick Rubin approach to the story, reducing it to its bare essentials. Tommila is fully believable, at least in the absurd reality the film establishes, playing one of the toughest son of a guns in movie history.
Killing Nazis can be tiring business.
Helander lightens the mood occasionally, such as when lead baddie Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie), following his umpteenth attempt to fell Korpi, briefly looks to the sky, either to curse the heavens or to check if his opponent is coming at him from above.
Either way, he knows his number's up soon, as does the audience. And Sisu doesn't dare disappoint. – Adam Graham/The Detroit News/Tribune News Service
Summary:
Finnish him!
