‘Sisu’ or — The Power of Concision?
A shudder of worry ran up my spine as Jalmari Helander’s ‘Sisu’ (2023) opened with an obvious Tarantino reference appearing before my eyes as chapter headings crashed onto the screen in bright, bold yellow coloured lettering. Hmm, that’s not a promising sign.
The good news is that despite the direct homage to Q.T.’s style Helander’s flick has something going for it that lifts it above pretty much all of Quentin’s work, for me anyway, and that something can be summed up in one, single word — concision. Not only that but despite starting off in a similarly serious fashion to PTA’s ‘There Will be Blood’ (2007) as we watch a solitary gold prospector, Aatami Corpi (Jorma Tomilla), silently digging for untold wealth in a dirty hole, by the film’s end you realise you’ve just watched something way more along the lines of a Warner Bros.’ Loony Tunes cartoon than anything else, which could explain while I was laughing so hard.
You see, the thing is that this prospector is also Finland’s most feared and lethal commando, now retired, so when a retreating platoon of Nazi soldiers steal his gold and leave him for dead this bearded, dirt-caked man becomes an unstoppable killing machine as he sets out to take back what is his. This determination in the face of impossible odds is called, in Finnish, “sisu”, and Aatami is made of nothing but sisu.
This basic conceit — a fight over gold in a harsh landscape while men dangle from ropes — means ‘Sisu’ feels like a Lapland spin on the Spaghetti Western genre combined with a healthy dose of ‘First Blood’ (1982) as one man takes on numerous baddies and hell, why not throw in a splash of Indiana Jones and Michael Mann’s ‘The Keep 919830 for good measure. And you have to admit that’s a pretty tasty list of ingredients for a potentially delicious cinematic cocktail. Yet what makes it all work so effectively, or from becoming a mess, is how Helander keeps everything totally stripped down to that one single idea — a man wants his gold back… and that’s it. There’s nothing superfluous, no extended monologues, no waffling self-indulgence or needless asides. Just ‘sisu’ in action.
This narrative minimalism means watching Aatami on screen is like watching a cross between Roadrunner’s Wile E. Coyote and James Cameron’s The Terminator as we see the old guy variously blown-up, hung, drowned, exploded, stabbed, etc and yet he still keeps going… and going… and going. Helander handles the believability levels perfectly starting out with a few “Okay, that’s not too ridiculous” moments that don’t strain our disbelief too much before gradually cranking up the craziness until, by the end, all semblance of reality has been left way, way behind. And it’s hilarious!
There’s one moment (which I won’t spoil but it involves a plane crash) where any other director would’ve pulled things back or reined the excessiveness in a tad to allow for even a glimmer of credibility to shine through. But Helander goes (delightfully and deliriously) in the exact opposite direction and BLAM!, smashes the fucker straight into the earth with the force and speed of a missile. And because we’ve been pre-armed with the knowledge that, yep, he’s going to survive even THAT meant I was giggling away like an idiot.
‘Sisu’ is genuinely quite a bit of fun. Sure, it’s got a couple nitpicks you could have a go at if you wanted and is somewhat disposable but I came out of it having had such a good time I couldn’t care less about those. It’s also nicely shot, has an atmospheric score, great sound design and, most importantly of all, gets to the bloody point, entertains the hell out of you then fucks off again as quickly as it arrived meaning it doesn’t outstay its welcome for a single second.
And sometimes that’s the greatest thing a movie can do.
