Greed and Gold

Putting Nazis in a movie is easy shorthand. As one of the great villains of history, slapping a few Nazis into any work makes it easy to say, "these are the bad guys and, no, we don't have to provide any explanation as to why." The Indiana JonesTapping into the classic serial adventures of the 1940s, this franchise has gone on to spawn five films, multiple video games, a TV series, and so many novels and books. series didn't need to explain why Nazis were bad, they just let them be cartoony villains that the hero could defeat. Time hasn't changed that at all (even if there are some on the Right that seem to lean towards Nazi ideology); hell, even the most recent Indiana Jones went back to using Nazis because they're the villains that are easy to hate.

2023's Sisu uses the same trick. It sets one man against a battalion of Nazis and while it spends a fair bit of time building up its central hero it never once bothers trying to turn the Nazis into real characters. Why should it? These are Nazis, the biggest bad guys of at least the last century. You could spend time going into the nuances of war, trying to elaborate on good vs. evil, to really get into the the depth and emotion of conflict. Or, you could put in Nazis so we can hate them and delight as they get shot, stabbed, blow up, and killed real good. The film has a lot of killing it wants to do, to make us delight in the carnage, and it's easy to do that when the guys being killed are Nazis. You can shut off your brain and enjoy the big, bloody cartoon when its the Nazis that are suffering.

The film is focused on Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a former soldier who fought against the Russians for Norway. He's since retired and gone to his own chunk of lands to live alone and dig for gold. When he finds a big vein of the glittery stuff, though, he knows he has to dig it up and get it to the bank. Stake his claim and protect his fortune. Loading up his horse, and gathering up dog, Korpi sets off for the nearest town... which puts him right on the path of a platoon of Nazi soldiers.

As Korpi soon discovers, he's wandered into the last retreat of the Germans from the Lapland War, and as the Nazis make their escape they're slashing, burning, and killing anyone and everything in their path, leaving the land dead and scorched. When the Nazis, led by Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie), find Korpi, they try to take his gold (and kill the man the process). That's when they discover the monster they've awoken: Korpi is unkillable. Not immortal, the man just refuses to die, and when he gets a taste for blood he'll kill anyone and everyone that gets in his way. His target is the Nazis, and the whole platoon will feel his wrath as he works to get his gold back and make his way, safely, to the bank once more.

The thing about Sisu is that it doesn't have a deep story. This movie doesn't aspire to try and look at what was going on during the Lapland War or how the Norwegians were fighting back against the Nazis. Even a Tarantino film (for which this movie has been favorably compared) would spend more time on the characters and motivations, letting them get a feel for their own scenario before any kind of blood carnage occurred. Sisu, though, is tight and lean. It's here to do one thing -- kill Nazis -- and it does it in glorious fashion.

If you've seen the trailer for the film then you have the perfect taste for the delights this film has on offer. That trailer promised bloody carnage in absolutely cartoonish fashion, and let me assure you, the film delivers on that promise. There is a whole ton of vengeance delivered at the hands of its main character as he plows through the Nazis by ones, twos, and threes, never letting up and never stopping. He is a one man death machine and the film sets him on a target we can all enjoy getting what's coming.

Were the film set in any other time period it would be harder to justify watching the character mow his way through soldiers. Were we talking about any other conflict of the last century -- hell, were it any other foe even in World War II -- it would be harder to say, "man, this carnage is delightful." There are nuanced feelings to be had about the Japanese side of the war, for example, even after the carnage of Pearl Harbor. But when it comes to Nazis, well, fuck those guys. Let's watch them die in glorious fashion.

It's really brilliant, when you think about it. Nazis are an easy villain to drop in anywhere, sure, but for a film like this, where the point is to watch a man pick up a one-man mission of vengeance, there are few foes easier to use than the Nazis. If this were a man battling against brutal and corrupt police we'd need an explanation for what the police did. Any other set of warriors, or political faction, or group of the like and we'd have to spend time developing them as characters so we understood why they had to die. About the only other group I can think of that you could substitute here is maybe the KKK, and, let's face it, that's only because that group is as bad as the Nazis, and espouses the same kind of ideology. Watching these kinds of people get what's coming requires no explanation. We see them and we know who the villain is.

Now, sure, this kind of bloody carnage isn't going to be for everyone. This is an over-the-top, violent film that revels in its bloody carnage. Blood, guts, bones, limbs, and more fly by the time the credits roll. The film has a certain dumb, cartoony logic that defies the gore on screen, but that's all part of its charm. Those looking for this specific kind of ludicrous spectacle will likely roll some stomachs (in much the same way the carnage of a horror film with turn some people away). It's brutal, but hilarious, in a way that makes sense for the target audience.

I do think this film is fantastic. It's over-the-top and dumb in the best possibly way. It's the violent antithesis of dramatic, slow-burn war films. It doesn't go in for nuance in its story or dynamic shading for the characters. It has one job and it absolutely wants to deliver: the goal is to show a man blasting apart Nazis with reckless abandon and, sure as shit, it does that in spades. That's what the trailer promised and that's what the film gives you, for a solid hour and a half. No more and no less.

Sisu is a lean, tight, focused film. There are films with more depth, films that look into the horrors of the Second World War, films that try to get to the core nuance of the conflict. Sisu ignores all that. It gives us a man, a group of Nazis, and the inevitable, blood conflict between them. For the right audience, in the right mood, it provides everything we need and want: glorious, bloody spectacle. That's its promise, and it more than brings all that to the screen. Sometimes that's all you need.