Sisu (2022)
I spunked £19.99 on Amazon Prime to purchase Finnish war actioner Sisu because I have been rewarded for many years of service in the NHS, including during COVID, by a handout worth less than a Tory MP’s weekly nose clam cash. Even off my tits, Tories are all ugly, awful cunts; that’s crucially subjective and I’m sometimes nicer trashed. Oh yeah the film.
Sisu came with some vague online hopefulness but like a lot of what is online, always hold back some hope because other people aren’t you. Or in the case of Google diagnoses, disregard fear, you don’t have arse cancer and aren’t Jeremy Cunt. On to my experience of Sisu not worrying about blistering sores, broken ankles and break ups.
Oh man why isn’t Sisu subtitled? I hate dubbed, I’m not spending a score on an irreversibly dubbed film, it’s like being shown what a stroke will feel like, lips and words all out of sync. It also ruins the drama because you’re not truly part of it; Imagine if Irreversible was dubbed, would the guy have screamed as believably as his head was caved in with an obviously added accent?
Fortunately it turns out they made Sisu in English, which is also irrelevant as you barely need language to navigate the plot. In fact, I think the entire film was scripted in chalk pictures and the actors were ordered to resist anything even close to complex talk. I’d call it non verbal communication but basically it’s bullets and bloody carnage.
Sisu presents like an idiot mash up of Django Unchained and Fury. It’s all stylised throwback and pointless, headlined B-Movie “chapters” with very little going on. But, OH THEN IT FUCKING KICKS OFF! Did I mention I like the idiot who made Sisu? Beautiful chucks of Nazi flying all over the place in splendid technicolour. With gold to retain and rape victims to save, it’s never really clear which is more important to rescue, but narratively the ladies are.
I’m being cruel, Director Jalmari Helander has given us one of the best Christmas films ever (Rare Exports) and the much more fun than its IMDb suggests, Big Game. I recommend Big Game, by the way, it is a good popcorn film.
A WW2, Finnish Rambo, Sisu follows some guy (Aatami), who doesn’t talk, in a cat and mouse action ramble with Nazis. It’s visually sparse, there's no huge set pieces and that's fine, they’ve saved the budget for firing weapons and blowing people up. Fair play I say, action and reaction (to explosives) are what kept me watching. Sisu is a series of how Aatami gets out of each ever harder situation, always with a satisfying and violent solution (he never talks his way out because he doesn’t talk).
Aatami, whose name I only know because I research not remember, makes John WIck look like a verbose bore. I appreciate there’s mild spoilers in this review, but I don’t think I’m telling you anything you didn’t know in advance. The fun is in seeing if he'll live, and how he might achieve that. Sisu does what it says on the tin and it does it well.
Absolutely stupid, OTT nonsense, loaded with laughs among the chunky viscera, Sisu is pure entertainment and doesn't want to be anything more. Do I want to see a sequel? Did I wake up with an erection? Hell yes! 8/10
Comments
Post a Comment