Wednesday, 12 March 2025

Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2022)


The text right at the start explaining that the Finnish word 'sisu' is untranslatable does not bode well for what's to come (this is an oft-stated Finnish fallacy, 'guts' or 'determination' are quite adequate translations). In any case, the protagonist if meant to be the embodiment of it, a one-man army prospecting for gold in the wilds of Lapland in 1944 with the retreating German army all around. He comes up against a German unit who try to rob him of his gold, so he summarily kills the lot of them. Then another unit comes after him, led by an off-the-shelf cartoonishly brutal Nazi officer, and more extreme violence ensues.
It is as efficiently scripted as its hero is single-minded and taciturn, but that doesn't excuse the tiresome ludicrosity of it action sequences, scant regard for historical accuracy and lack of any point at all.

4/10

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