Film / Sisu

Vengeance is Golden.

"This isn't about who's the strongest. This is about not giving up."
"We have a word for that in Finland."

— Aino

Sisu is a Finnish action war movie written and directed by Jalmari Helander and starring Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, and Jack Doolan, released in January 2023 by Nordisk Film after a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.

In the fall of 1944, after three years of fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, Finland has finally signed an armistice with the latter. As part of the terms, Finnish forces have agreed to expel all the German troops stationed in Lapland, who are now retreating towards Norway while implementing a scorched earth policy on the villages and towns.

In the northern wilderness of Lapland, Finnish veteran Aatami Korpi is digging for gold while the war rages around him. Eventually, he hits a huge lode and starts journeying south with his riches. However, he quickly runs into a platoon of Nazis led by an SS officer Bruno Helldorf, who realize what he's carrying and try to take the gold for themselves. What follows is a brutal struggle and chase across the Lapland wilderness as Aatami, himself an established commando, uses every trick he knows to keep hold of the fortune he has earned.

In December 2023, a sequel from the same director was announced.

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Sisu provides examples of:

• All There in the Manual: Most of the characters aren't named in the film. Of the Germans, only Müller's (one of the two pilots) and Jens' (one of the soldiers on the truck) names are said out loud.
• Amazon Brigade: Aino and the female prisoners become this in the climax once Aatami breaks them out.
• Artistic License – History: Surely a long list of examples, but one particularly loud, theatrical example stands out, coinciding with Artistic License – Military—the SS platoon's use of a barely-disguised T-55 postwar medium tank, which was only adopted by the USSR, at earliest, in 1948. The example itself is Polish (the T-54/55 models were the most widely manufactured tanks in history, and it and its derivatives served extensively in Africa, Asia and Europe, including Finland) and features prominently in the trailers. Strangely, the film doesn't do the usual measure of dressing it up to at least superficially resemble one of the famed Tiger, Panther, or even contemporaneous Red Army tanks captured by the Germans (they even use the 12.7-mm DShK heavy machinegun against Aatami, no equivalent of which existed in Wehrmacht service), but it does get an iron cross painted on the turret (a normal treatment of Soviet armour repurposed by Germany). The T-55 was likely just an easier and more convenient vehicle for filming than a more period-accurate halftrack or German Sturmgeschutz.
• Asshole Victim: It's hard to be less sympathetic than rapist Nazi deserters, and they get their just desserts trying to take Aatami's gold.
• Badass Longcoat: Helldorf wears an impressive black longcoat that goes down to his knees and highlights his intimidating and dangerous appearance.
• Bad Boss: Helldorf shoots one of his own men for deserting when the man refuses to continue to pursue Aatami and later murders the tank driver when they arrive at their escape airplane.
• Bald of Evil: Whenever Helldorf removes his Commissar Cap, it's shown he has as many hairs on his head as he does moral scruples (none).
• Big Bad: Bruno Helldorf, leader of the Nazi platoon trying to steal Aatami's gold.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Twice over, Helldorf squanders a golden opportunity to kill Aatami. First, he delays in shooting him until Aatami gathers all of the dropped gold, allowing him to use a mine to escape. Second, when he captures him and has him completely at his mercy, he elects to have Aatami hung from a pole to either asphyxiate or starve to death rather than just shooting him. Sure enough, Aatami escapes and is able to exact bloody revenge on him.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: After he has killed the three soldiers on the rowboat (the last one indirectly) Aatami uses the last one's corpse as protection when Wolf tries to use the tank's machine gun to take him down.
• Canine Companion: Aatami has a trusted blue Bedlington Terrier who follows him everywhere. Unfortunately it also leads the Germans to him after he escapes them the first time.
• Clothing-Concealed Injury: Schultze never removes his tanker's helmet except for one Hats Off to the Dead scene, and this may be because taking it off reveals some ugly third-degree burns on the side of his head and a missing ear.
• Cold Sniper: Wolf, the sadistic second-in-command to the Nazi squad, is always seen wielding a bolt-action rifle to snipe opponents from afar (although his aim leaves something to be desired).
• Combat Pragmatist: Aatami uses every trick possible to get an advantage over the Nazis, who have numbers and firepower over him. You know you qualify as this when you throw landmines at your enemies as offensive weapons, set yourself on fire to deter pursuing attack dogs, and survive a protracted period underwater by slitting mens' throats and sucking the air out of the wound.
• Commissar Cap: Helldorf wears one, fitting for an SS Obersturmführer.
• Cool Old Guy: Aatami is advanced in his years but he's a ruthless, clever and tough-as-nails veteran commando fighter with hundreds of kills under his belt from the Winter War. The Nazis fare little better against him.
• Cruel Mercy: Aatami decides not to execute Wolf. Instead, he leaves him to the tender mercies of the women he helped kidnap. He's last seen tied to a tank cannon, barely alive.
• Dangerous Deserter: The Nazis become actively more dangerous once they decide they want to make a clean getaway from the impending Nazi defeat stocked on (Atami's) gold. Late in the film, they're also aided by a Soviet deserter.
• Defiant to the End: When prompted for final words at the mercy of his enemies, Aatami responds with a Death Glare. Helldorf also goes down shouting obscenities at Aatami to his dying breath.
• Dented Iron: As seen when he's washing on a river, Aatami is covered in scars from his time fighting the Russians. By the end of the film he's been shot multiple times, riddled with shrapnel, has half his face hanging off and survived a plane crash, but still has enough in him to go to the bank and deposit his gold.
• Determinator: Aatami will hold on to his gold, and a platoon of Nazis isn't going to stop him. When the soldier Jens asks his Finnish prisoner Aino if she believes that he is actually immortal, she says no; he simply refuses to die. Essentially, he's the personification of the titular sisu, a uniquely Finnish expression signifying resilience, hardiness, and bravery.
• Dictionary Opening: The film opens with text explaining the meaning of the Finnish word "sisu." Aino later explains it in dialogue again.
• Disney Villain Death: Aatami finishes off Helldorf by dropping him off the plane to his death. While he's strapped to a bomb.
• The Dog Bites Back: Big time. Aatami arms the captive women who the SS took as sex slaves, takes out the driver of their truck, and has Aino pull up beside their troop transport so the ladies can gun all of them down in a matter of seconds.
• The Dragon: Wolf, Helldorf's primary subordinate. He's one of the only Nazis to survive, but he is captured by the female prisoners and delivered to the Finnish Army, which means he'll probably be executed for war crimes.
• The Dreaded: Helldorf and Aino each have a monologue talking about what a legendary badass Aatami is. Near the film's end, when Aatami has killed most of the Nazi company, the two guys on the motorcycle would rather abandon their bike and take their chances in the Finnish wilderness than tangle with Aatami, even though they had machineguns trained on him.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Aatami kills all the Nazis and gets his gold back, getting to retire as a rich man.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Chapter 6 is titled "Kill 'em All", and features Aatami doing exactly that.
• Expy: Aatami is one of both Rambo and a Real Life Winter War soldier known as Simo Häyhä, aka The White Death.
• Genre Throwback: Its ultra-violent, Western-ish stylings are reminiscent of the European WWII exploitation films of the 60's and 70's like The Inglorious Bastards and The Cut-Throats.
• The Ghost: The Nazi general that converses with the main Nazi foes in the film never shows up in the film (either visually or vocally). His role in the film consists mostly of relaying the main Nazis the backstory of Aatami and that they should not fuck with him.
• Gorn: Quite a lot. For example, in addition to guys getting blown into chunks by a minefield, Jens gets run over by a tank at the final battle and we see his mangled corpse afterward.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Before they decide to desert halfway through the film, the Nazis are brutalizing Finland under the orders of a unindentified "General" (presumably, if we're going by history, Lothar Rendulic) that they talk to on the radio (although he is neither seen nor heard).
• Hats Off to the Dead: Done somewhat mockingly by Helldorf, Wolf and Schütze to Aatami after they (unsuccessfully) hang him, although there might be some genuine respect involved, at least by Schütze.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The minefield that gives the Nazis so much trouble is one they recently laid themselves.
• Hypocrite: Helldorf orders one of his men executed for fleeing after Aatami killed two other men, saying "Desertion is punishable by death". By this point, Helldorf had received a direct order from his commanding officer to leave Aatami alone, cut his losses, and resume the march to Norway, meaning that by continuing to try to hunt, kill and rob the commando turned miner, Helldorf himself was legally a deserter, as was everyone with him.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Despite Aatami's clever gambits, the Nazis get several opportunities to make clear shots at him across open ground, and the only reason he isn't killed is because they usually miss. They actually do hit him once or twice, but it's always trivial wounds.
• Implacable Man: Aatami being functionally unkillable and relentless in his rampages is what lead to the Soviets nicknaming him "Koschei the Immortal" (also known as Koschei the Deathless).
• Improvised Weapon: Aatami uses his digging tools as weapons several times when fighting the Nazis. This extends to defensiveness as well, as at one point he deflects bullet fire with his pan.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Aatami gets shot and banged up quite a lot throughout the film, but none of his wounds are life threatening or stop him from fighting at virtually peak performance.
• Kick the Dog:
  • If you hadn't guessed by the fact that they're Nazis, the first indication that Helldorf's crew are evil customers is the revelation that they have a truckload of Finnish women that they're raping. Helldorf later forces two of them to march ahead of their convoy as they cross a minefield (mercifully, both women survive the ordeal).
  • They also shoot at Aatami's dog as its running away from them, coming close to fulfilling the trope literally.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Schultze never protests any of Helldorf's brutal actions, but he never does anything sadistic either, and he takes off his hat when Aatami seems to have died.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: When the Nazis unload fully automatic blind fire into the smoke that Aatami is hiding in, he holds up his gold panning pan that stops quite a few bullets. Luckily for him, no bullets hit his unprotected legs.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Happens early on when the Nazis chase Aatami into a minefield that they had laid out. Three of the soldiers get blown up: two of them the old-fashioned way of stepping into them, and Aatami dispatches a third one by throwing one of the mines at him; in all cases, they explode into chunks of flesh.
• Made of Iron: Nothing can keep Aatami down. He gets shot, stabbed, hanged, and takes on two explosions, but he will keep going. Even being onboard a crashing airplane isn't enough to keep him down.
• Manly Facial Hair: Aatami has a thick beard befitting a Retired Badass living out in the wilderness who is more than capable of wiping out an entire Nazi company single-handedly.
• Man on Fire: At one point, Aatami douses himself in petrol and sets himself on fire to deter a pursuing attack dog. It gives him enough time to reach a lake and douse the flames.
• The Man They Couldn't Hang: About halfway through the film, Aatami gets caught and Helldorf decides to kill him by hanging. Aatami survives, then leaves a body of another Nazi in a wrecked plane with the same noose around his neck, just to let the rest know he's still alive.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Invoked. Aatami is compared to Koschei the Deathless by the Nazis' captives because of his well-known resilience and stubbornness, but there are some hints that suggest that they may actually be right: Aatami survives incredible damage, and bears scars on his body that suggest that his heart may have been removed, and that he might already have been undergoing autopsy when people realised he wasn't dead - or are these scars simply the scars left by old war wounds? Similarly, his first action when danger threatens is to send his dog away, and the dog does not only keep finding its way back to him, but Aatami also keeps making an effort to ensure the dog is out of harm's way as much as possible - is Aatami simply fond of the dog and repaying the loyalty of the only living creature that has been with him in his lonely life, or is he truly the Koschei of mythology and has hidden his soul in the dog, and thus cannot be killed while the dog lives?
• Mildly Military: The Nazis have seen better days, given this is late 1944. Many of them aren't properly wearing uniform (Wolf, the second-in-command of the outfit, barely wears a jacket), and their chain of command has gone to Hell by this point. They're more marauders raiding Finland while retreating than a military force when we first meet them.
• Mook Horror Show: Pretty much the entire movie, as Aatami keeps coming no matter what the Nazis throw at him and every clash just results in more of them dead. They start out cocky and boisterous but gradually become paranoid and fearful by the seemingly inhuman foe. When the Nazis find a downed Stuka with the pilot hanged with the rope they used to hang Aatami, they react like an evil spirit is hunting them - pure panic and quiet terror.
• More Dakka: When Wolf can't hit Aatami with his regular rifle (and shots that do land are ineffective), he simply says "fuck this" and mounts the platoon's tank's machine gun instead. It still doesn't work because of the Bulletproof Human Shield Aatami uses.
• Mugging the Monster: The Nazis thought it would be easy to rob an old gold miner who was by himself out on the Lapland tundra. They were dead wrong.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: During the final fight, Helldorf bludgeons Aatami with a static line. It's still not enough to take Aatami down.
• Offscreen Teleportation: In slasher villain-esque fashion, Aatami frequently materializes out of thin air when the Nazis (and the camera) aren't looking.
• Oh, Crap!: Helldorf and the rest of the German soldiers get a collective one after Wolf discovers that the pilot in the crashed airplanes has the rope they hanged Aatami with wrapped around his neck, as they now realize that Aatami is still alive and is coming to get them.
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: Title cards announce a total of seven chapters throughout the film: "The Gold", "The Nazis", "The Minefield", "The Legend", "Scorched Earth", "Kill 'Em All", and the Final Chapter.
• One-Man Army: Aatami is one, and is even called as such by one of the characters. During the Winter War, he has said to have killed hundreds of Russians all by himself, earning him the nickname "The Immortal". His character is based very loosely on Simo Häyhä, a Real Life Finnish war hero credited with over 500 kills.
• Plot Armor: In spite of his many impressive gambits and physical resiliancy, Aatami's survival through the film owes quite a bit to simple luck and bad aim.
• The Quiet One: Aatami doesn't talk at all, only speaking in grunts and making gestures when interacting with the Nazis and their Finnish prisoners. He has exactly one line of dialogue at the very end when he's cashing his gold at a bank in Helsinki: "Give me bills, and big ones. They're less fucking heavy."
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Helldorf's company marauds their way through northern Finland, kidnapping women for sexual entertainment, stealing everything valuable they come across, and destroying what they can't take with them.
• Rated M for Manly: This is a movie about a John Wick or Rambo-inspired Retired Badass who singlehandedly takes on an entire platoon of Those Wacky Nazis and kills them in brutal, gruesome, and satisfying ways.
• Retired Badass: Aatami is an Old Soldier who fought in the Winter War against the USSR (it's unclear if he also fought in the 41-44 Continuation War), scoring a body count of 300+ Russians. He has since left the war behind and has become a gold digger in Lapland, but as the Nazis find out the hard way, his skills haven't diminished one bit.
• Riding the Bomb: How Helldorf goes out. Not that he wanted to ride it, though - Aatami hooks him to a bomb and drops him out of an airplane. He goes down shouting and cursing Aatami with his last breath.
• Salt the Earth: As in Real Life, the Nazis are scorching down Lapland's towns and villages as they're retreating north towards the Norwegian border. Aatami comes across the destroyed remains of Rovaniemi and is quite horrified by the sight.
• Scenery Porn: At the start of the film we get to see some breathtaking shots of the wilderness of Lapland during the fall of 1944. Turns into Scenery Gorn when Aatami arrives at Rovaniemi.
• Scream Discretion Shot: We don't see what the women did to Wolf because we just hear his screaming and cut away, but when we come back to the Finnish ladies we can see they have stolen the Nazi tank and driven it to friendly territory and they have Wolf hanging from the barrel like a hog, covered in blood and barely alive.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Happens twice in the film:
  • First when three soldiers are tasked with finding Aatami from a lake he has hidden in. After Aatami kills the first two, the third one starts rowing away in panic. This gets him shot by Wolf for desertion.
  • Second is during the final battle when two soldiers come across Aatami after slowly witnessing him destroy the rest of their convoy one by one. Despite having their machine gun pointed right at him at close range while he's armed only with a pickaxe, they promptly flee and leave their cycle behind.
  • In a broader sense, the antagonistic Nazis in the film are primarily concerned with just getting the Hell out of dodge from the oncoming Finnish and Soviet advance.
• Self-Surgery: After being shot and having received multiple other injuries, Aatami fixes most of them all by himself, shown in gruesome detail.
• Show, Don't Tell: Used extensively throughout the film. A huge portion of the film has no dialogue, and the first line almost 15 minutes into the film.
• Shout-Out: The way Aatami dispatches Helldorf is quite reminiscent of Major Kong's death in Doctor Strangelove, as he's tied to the bomb of the old Soviet bomber and falls to his death riding it after Aatami opens the hatch.
• Skinny Dipping: Aatami bathes in the river shortly before starting his long and bloody back to civilization from his mine. It mainly serves to show off his large collection of very ugly scars, the first hint that he's more than just some old prospector.
• Sole Survivor: Wolf is the only explicitly shown survivor of the Nazi company, captured by the women. The two motorcycle Nazis aren't shown being killed onscreen, but they're last seen retreating in the direction the vengeful female prisoners are later shown coming from.
• Suddenly Speaking: Aatami doesn't speak a word until the very last line in the film.
  Aatami: In cash. Big bills, thanks. So that it's not so damn heavy to carry around.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: One of the Nazi goons is killed when Aatami throws a landmine which hits him square in the middle of his forehead, blowing the poor bastard into chunks.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The villains of the film are a squad of raping and pillaging Nazis during the Lapland War, a villain any audience will enjoy seeing get their asses kicked.
• Translation Convention: Despite being a Finnish production, almost all of the dialogue is in English, which stands in for German. Characters speaking Finnish actually speak Finnish.
• Vertical Kidnapping: Wolf gets yanked out the tank's hatch when he opens it to attack Aatami, who's on the tank's roof.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Numerous Germans forego many opportunities to simply gun Aatami down, starting from the very first fight scene, when the man holding a gun to Aatami's head apparently he decides he wants to shoot the old man in the back of the head point blank while he's kneeling on the ground instead of simply shooting him in the back of the head point blank, giving Aatami time to go for his knife. During several fights, armed German soldiers will inexplicably rush up and grab at Aatami rather than shoot at him like you'd expect a veteran soldier to do. Helldorf has Aatami dead to rights at one point but decides to postpone shooting so that Aatami can collect his scattered gold for him. When two Germans have their machinegun pointed at Aatami, who is armed only with a pickaxe, they toss their guns away and flee.
• Why Won't You Die?: Helldorf says this while battering Aatami in the film's climax.
• Worthy Opponent: Aatami is maybe one to Schütze.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Helldorf tells Schütze and Wolf that they are simply going to leave the rest of the unit behind once they get to the plane because it will make the escape easier. Later on, Helldorf murders Schütze when they reach their evacuation plane so he can have more of the gold for himself.

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