Sisu: Lackluster Action With Minimal Story

The simplistic story with minimal dialogue is nothing new in Hollywood. These tend to end up in action movies where, by not spending as much time on the plot, more screen time can be devoted to running through intense action sequences. The problem with Sisu is that, while the plot may be simple, the action sequences that fills the movie are not interesting or unique enough to carry the film into the realm of being something interesting.

Sisu follows a prospector who finds a large vein of gold buried in Finland's wilderness during World War II's end phases. On his way to a bank to cash in this gold, he encounters a small platoon of Nazi soldiers and has to fight his way through to claim his money.

The simple story and lack of dialogue is not an issue, especially when the sound mix and score are as strong as they are. The issue comes in when there are some sequences with dialogue that are unnecessary for the story. The exposition around the protagonist’s backstory is given twice, the origin of the term “Sisu” is given twice, and at one point the main antagonist delivers an unnecessary line of dialogue.

The problem comes from the framing of the action sequences more than anything else where they are not shot well. While there are some interesting kills (all of which are seen in the trailer), there are a ton of sequences where things are just hard to follow and not particularly engaging. On top of that, more modern action movies have made it so if the protagonist is harmed at some point in the film, they tend to have an impact on how they move. Sisu does not do this and kind of has the protagonist have an almost Michael Myers from Halloween level of immortality which, after a certain point, takes away any stakes from an action sequence because the viewer figures out he won’t die.

On top of that, the sequence of events is entirely designed to create circumstances around which the protagonist will survive which just gets comical after a certain point. There are several points in the movie where they have the protagonist dead to rights and could just kill him but the Nazis decide to go about it in an almost comical way.

Sisu will eventually hit streaming and that is probably the best way to enjoy it. That said, of movies so far in 2023, this one did the best job of taking advantage of Dolby’s moving audio is if one has a subscription service and wants to try that out, this is probably the movie to do that with. Beyond that, this is a definite example of a movie that one can watch at home on streaming and find just as entertaining.

Final Rating: 6.5/10