BY ROGER WATSON
The film Sisu, made in 2022, had passed me by. A box office success on its release in the United States, I don’t recall it being shown in the United Kingdom. But it is available now on Netflix and if you like a good revenge movie with Nazis dying in ways you never imagined possible, then Sisu is the film for you.
At the end of the Second World War the Germans are retreating through Finland leaving a scorched earth behind them. Starring Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi, a former Finnish army commando turned gold prospector who has turned his back on matters military, the action revolves around him and his encounters with retreating German soldiers.
Plodding home on his horse with a saddlebag full of gold nuggets, he passes telegraph poles with bodies hanging from them. The old man is a figure of fun for the detachments of mechanised soldiers he meets on the road. They ignore him until he drops a gold nugget, and they realise what his saddlebags likely contain. Giving chase, they kill his horse and Korpi ends up on the ground.
Against seemingly impossible odds, one old man versus a detachment of armed and desperate German soldiers, it becomes clear that Korpi has forgotten none of his commando training. At this point the legend of the ‘Immortal’, as Korpi is known, begins.
The first killing is as gruesome as it is unexpected. A soldier approaches him as he picks himself off the ground, commando knife hidden behind his back. As the soldier makes to strike him, Korpi strikes first, and his knife enters the soldier’s head at one temple, emerging from the other. Using the soldier’s body as a shield and his machine gun as a weapon, Korpi takes down the whole detachment.
The small arms fire draws the attention of an earlier detachment commanded by a particularly nasty officer. One of his lorries contains a group of captured Finnish women with whom the soldiers can have their wicked way at will. The officer turns his detachment around to investigate, only to find the bodies of the other detachment and no sign of the old man. Korpi has fled as fast as his old legs will take him. But the officer sees the gold nugget and decides that his fortune lies in finding more and the chase begins.
Korpi, who had heard the bombing and seen the sky lit up in the distance when he was prospecting comes across a town, possibly his hometown, razed to the ground. It can only be assumed that any lingering affection he had for the Germans evaporates. As the Germans close in, he hides in a destroyed fuel station. Several spectacular dispatches of unwary Germans ensue but Korpi manages to knock himself unconscious with a grenade exploding at close quarters. One of the Germans is a specialist at hanging people and Korpi is duly strung up by the neck.
Korpi lives up to his ‘Immortal’ nickname and survives the hanging as the vibrations from a German plane landing in search of fuel dislodge the signpost from which he is hanging. The pilots meet a suitably swift end at Korpi’s hands, and he heads off on a motorbike in search of the German detachment which is holding the women captive. There is barely a scene where one German or another does not go to meet his Führer until he releases and arms the women who, as one can imagine, are less than forgiving to their former captives and rapists.
Towards the end of the film, it was spoiled slightly by some aerial action that was, frankly, unbelievable. As if the sight of an unarmed elderly man dispatching young armed soldiers was not unbelievable enough, Korpi gets airborne using his prospectors pick axe to attach himself to the underbelly of a plane with the German officer aboard as it takes off. He duly dispatches the pilot and the officer, survives a plane crash and lives to prospect for gold another day.
The most endearing aspect of this film is that there is not a wasted minute. The tension and the action are relentless. The dialogue is minimal, and despite the gore, there are some genuinely humorous scenes.
The Finnish word ‘Sisu’, the title of the film, is allegedly impossible to translate into English. But it approximates to tenacity, bravery and resilience all rolled into one. Whatever it means, if you watch the film, you will not be disappointed.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.