Take a John Wick movie, place it in the Northern Finnish tundra in the year 1944, and you've got Sisu. The title is an untranslatable Finnish word meaning grit, bravery, determination, and so forth – and that's what Sisu offers, primarily in the form of bloody violence.
During the final year of World War II, the tide has turned against Hitler, but the German Army is still in Scandinavia and applying a scorched-earth policy as they make their slow withdrawal. In the middle of this is Aatama Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a silent, solitary gold miner who has just struck it rich. Now he must haul his sacks of gold nuggets across German-occupied Lapland, all the way down to a bank in bombed-out Helsinki. Naturally, loads of greedy German soldiers stand in his way. Naturally, Korpi is a ruthless badass.
My father was born and raised in Lapland, albeit north of the Norwegian-Finnish border. As such, I was quite moved by Sisu's beautifully rugged scenery, shot on location in a landscape I recognized from my childhood visits to my grandparents. But while it's fun to watch Korpi waste those German soldiers – each one meaner than the next – Sisu's violence is more bludgeoning than thrilling; aside from a sequence in a minefield, there isn't much actual suspense. And Korpi is so absurdly invincible that even when he drowns, is hanged, or plummets to the earth in a plane, you never wonder how he's going to get out of it, because he just does.
Helander's script is Sisu's weakest link. Aside from Korpi's unbelievable escapades, the story is well-structured, but I was distracted by the German characters speaking English to each other. It was out of necessity, I suppose, as they are played by a Norwegian, an Englishman, and a couple dozen Finns, but there's no excuse for it in this post-Inglourious Basterds world, especially as Sisu's Finnish characters do speak Finnish to each other. Moreover, Helander's English dialogue is corny and tin-eared. If he was trying to make a Tarantino-esque film – and Sisu is inarguably Tarantino-esque, with its Morricone-inspired score, punchy chapter titles, and so forth – he lacks Tarantino's wit.
Goofy as it is, Sisu is still a satisfying action flick, and the scenery (and Kjell Lagerroos's cinematography) is truly stunning. But if I wasn't biased towards it because of my background, I doubt I would have liked it as much.