Between Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World and today’s film (and thankfully much shorter titled) Sisu (2022), I am catching up on some fairly recent movies that I meant to see in the theater.  It is a Finnish film, which explains why it has the 2022 release year when it premiered in the United States the same weekend as Big George Foreman and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.  I promise I did not plan it.  I have been slow to peruse the selections on my recently purchased Apple+ subscription, and I happened to notice Sisu as being available to rent.  I recall previews for it and thinking that it looked a lot like Inglorious Basterds (2009).  While Sisu does share some characteristics with that last title, if you are at all familiar with both these movies, you will know that the latter is another animal entirely.  Read on to find out how.

One obvious similarity between Inglorious Basterds and Sisu is that they are split into chapters.  Each of them is cartoonishly gory.  And while Inglorious Basterds does the impossible by showing Adolf Hitler being machine gunned to death in a Paris cinema, Sisu takes the over-the-top violence in killing Nazis to another level.  It starts humbly enough.  It is 1944, towards the end of World War II in Finland, and Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) has had enough of fighting.  To pass the time, with bombs dropping in the distance, who goes to the middle of nowhere (which is saying something for Finland) and discovers a sizable vein of gold.  Once he has his horde secure in saddle bags, he begins his trek back to civilization with his dog in tow.  Along the way, he passes a couple of trucks carrying German soldiers and a few captured Finnish women, accompanied by a tank.  One of Germans wants to arbitrarily kill Aatami, but their commander, Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie), lets Aatami pass, saying that the old man will die soon anyway heading in his current direction.  The first opportunity comes when Aatami shortly thereafter encounters a few German stragglers.  They order him to get off his horse and search through his belongings, finding the gold.  Aatami does not like people messing with his newfound treasure.  He thus proceeds to murder the handful of soldiers gathered around him.  Hearing more gunshots than is needed to kill one man, Bruno orders that they turn around.  When they catch sight of Aatami, they begin to open fire.  Though he manages to stay unscathed from tank blasts, his horse steps on a land mine and he is thrown off.  Bruno finds Aatami’s dog tags, and learns of the Fin’s incredible war record.  Bruno’s commanding officer tells him to not pursue this dangerous man, but the lure of gold proves too much of an enticement.  Thus, his tank and the trucks arrive to find a miraculously alive (this happens a lot) Aatami frantically collecting his gold nuggets.  Once that is done, he stands up and throws a rock at another land mine before they can shoot him dead.  In the proceeding wave of smoke and bullets, Aatami gets away and comes to a lake, jumping in with the Germans continuing to shoot at him.  Bruno orders a few of his men to go in after Aatami, but it does not end well for the gofers.  The last of these unfortunate souls Aatami uses as a human shield on his back in order to run away from more shooting after he makes it to the other side of the body of water.  The one who does not make it with him is Aatami’s dog.  Bruno finds it, straps a grenade to it, and lets it go, trusting that it will find its owner as it seems to have a special knack for doing.  Upon their reunion, Aatami notices the explosive and gets it off just in time to save both their lives.  However, Bruno finds an unconscious Aatami and decides to hang the Fin. Aatami survives by swinging his body onto a spike to relieve the choking.  When a German plane lands near the gas station at which he had been left, it knocks the sign down from which he had been strung, freeing him.  He then uses the plane to track down Bruno’s tank and get back his riches.  The first step he takes is to free the women in one of the German trucks.  From this vehicle, he is able to hop onto the tank after arming the women.  They take care of the other truck full of German soldiers and make it to safety while Aatami goes after Bruno.  Though he gets separated from the tank after dealing with one of its crew, he catches up to the plane Bruno boards to leave Finland as it is taking off.  The shots Aatami fires manage to mortally wound the pilot.  Despite the being shot, they manage to take off . . . with Aatami clinging to the bottom of the plane with his pick axe.  I had to laugh a little here, though the rest is pretty unbelievable, too.  From his precarious position, he manages to get inside the plane and takes a beating from Bruno.  Just as it seems Aatami is finally defeated, he hooks Bruno to the one bomb this plane is carrying for some reason and drops it.  It is at this point that the pilot finally dies.  Finding no parachute, Aatami straps himself to a bulkhead as the plane dives nose first into the ground.  An apparently unscathed Sisu later emerges from the mud, gathers his saddle bags full of gold, and makes his way to Helsinki.  Once in the capital, his tattered form enters a bank and startles the customers.  Aatami does not care because he is eager to get the money from his efforts.

There is not much to glean from a Catholic perspective in Sisu, at least not from its plot.  The one moment I took most notice in this regard is at the beginning when they explain the title, and once more when it is discussed by the de factoleader of the captive women, Aino (Mimosa Willamo).  According to these moments, there is no exact translation for this Finnish word.  It basically means superhuman courage and determination.  What interested me most is how it says that it manifests itself when all hope is lost.  For Aatami, he accesses it because he is not about to let the Nazis take everything from him, especially after the Soviets had already murdered his family.  This resolve allows him to accomplish incredible tasks.  There is a Faith equivalent to this sort of feeling, yet it is not typically found by those putting knives through the skulls of Nazis.  Instead, it is called upon by martyrs facing certain death, or the person who has nothing left and seeks comfort in God.  Doing extraordinary things does not necessarily mean Old Testament feats like making water flow from a rock, or splitting a sea.  The New Testament addresses this, saying in saying in verse twenty of Matthew that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will be able to literally move mountains.  This is no trick, and yet why would anyone want to physically level a mountain?  Instead, the kinds of movements we can see are of a more personal nature.  This is in line with what you see in the film, though in the Christian sense there would be a lot less dying and revenge.

Like many examples of films when giving it a Catholic spin, Sisu is not perfect.  In fact, it is far from it.  The blood and guts are hard enough to watch.  There are some historical problems that I noticed, too.  For example, outside of the uniforms and most of the guns, the German equipment is all Russian.  Seeing a Russian tank being driven by German soldiers annoyed this historian.  There are not a lot of redeeming qualities here in general, and it is best avoided.