Sisu, review: This man vs an entire Nazi platoon? They never stood a chance
The first and last deaths of Nazis who have it coming, in the Finnish action romp Sisu, are particularly choice, but in between there are a couple of dozen to satiate the most jaded of gorehounds. I’m not sure anyone’s going to come away spiritually enriched, exactly, unless the kind of meathead karma Tarantino unleashed (long-windedly) in Inglourious Basterds was in some way a balm for your soul. This one has a more basic remit and slam-dunks it without fussing around.
We begin in 1944, with a retired commando named Aatami (Jorma Tommila, looking rather like a beardy Pierce Brosnan) gold-prospecting in the Lapland wilderness. Renowned for slaughtering 300 Russian troops single-handedly during the Winter War, this lone ranger has lost his family and home, lately keeping company only with a very cute Bedlington Terrier. It’s a crucial part of the film’s contract with its audience that this whimpering pooch will narrowly dodge all the bullets coming its way, so don’t panic.
Fate has yet another gruelling battle in store for Aatami, when he has the bad luck to run into a Wehrmacht tank platoon headed by an SS Obersturmführer, Bruno (bald, charismatic-as-ever Norwegian A-lister Aksel Hennie). The Nazis are in mid-evacuation at the end of the Lapland War, and would do a lot better to concentrate on that than turn such a legendary survivor into their quarry. One look at his backpack full of gold nuggets, and that greedy gleam we’ve so often seen becomes their hot ticket to having their brains blown out.
This kind of contest always hinges on craft. Director Jalmari Helander (who happens to be Tommila’s brother-in-law) gets satisfying contributions across the board, from the accomplished camerawork to snappy editing, an intent score, and some particularly virtuosic make-up and VFX.
When someone’s gored across the face in this, they certainly stay gored. The Nazis bark orders to each other in English for the international audience, while Tommila (much like Mads Mikkelsen as the one-eyed Viking in Valhalla Rising) gives a totally wordless performance, at least until his very last scene.
Aatami is like some figure out of folk myth let loose on his persecutors, shaking off a ridiculous assortment of injuries between one set piece and the next. When six women held captive in a truck become avenging furies too, turning the tables on their rapists, the film signals its biggest debt as a fascists-must-die steeplechase – to Mad Max: Fury Road.
15 cert, 91 min. In cinemas now
