Sisu - Jalmari Helander - 2023

★★★★★-It's about as close to an obvious Tarantino-style movie as you can get and still be good. Best Tarantino clone out there. Django-esque, but way more violent and fucked. This movie is fucking bonkers and incredible. Fucking awesome.

Gist is a guy in Finland in 1944 is off the grid finds a shit ton of gold when Nazis show up and try to take it. All hell breaks loose as this dude is really not to be fucked with. Bag of gold always equals death. Should have read Chaucer. That's all you need. 

This is director Jalmari Helander's first movie. What a debut. Stars Jorma Tommila as the Rombo-esque lead. You might recognize him and his son, Onni Tommila, who plays one of the Nazis in this flick, from Rare Exports or Big Game. Also stars Aksel Hennie (The Martian, The Cloverfield Paradox), Jack Doolan (he looks like a Nazi John C. Reilly, he played Horse Tommy in The Boys), and Mimosa Willamo (never seen her) as the most developed female character. 

I'm gonna make a bold statement here. I fucking hate Nazis. Where do I find the courage? What do I hate worse than Nazis? Raping (see the Nazi John C. Reilly), dog (attempted) and horse killing SS Nazis. Can't really get worse than that. These guys are immediately repulsive in the most extreme way. That's my shit. There is no one I'd feel better about dying horribly than someone like that. Revenge at its finest, although unbelievable (but that's the point). Love the overkill of the last guy, by the by. 

Movie is a bunch of healthy catharsis. Crank that shit up. This fucking guy kills more Nazis than Indiana Jones! One-man army, Ason? Also, like that this guy has a cute little dog that is just as tough and hard to kill as he is. 

When they find the dude's dog-tags, they call the Nazi general who says forget it, don't fuck with this guy. The leader of this battalion disregards this and goes at him, thinking this is his way out of getting hanged when the Allies win the war. Then, when the one guy who is like “naw” tries to take off and not die, dude says, “desertion is punishable by death,” the fucking balls on this guy. 

Lastly, spoiler, the guy doing all the killing doesn't talk until the last scene of the movie, in Finish, which isn't translated. Looked it up. After all the shit and killing for his bags of gold. He goes into a bank and dumps it out, saying that he wants to trade all that in for large bills to make it easier to carry. Incredible. This fucking guy. 

Overall take: unbelievable. It's all of the scorched earth, good shit variety. Dude is a legend. Everyone except the Nazi is like, “y'all fucked up.” And they have as this guy is a silent maniac who kills people in John Wickian ways in the style of exploitation films from the 1970s. Did I mention Tarantino? We are talking righteous retribution. If you cross him, you are royally fucked. You cannot kill this guy because he will not fucking give up. He just refuses to die and kills people in incredibly entertaining ways. Give me sequels and prequels of this mother fucker. Remarkable film. Fun as fuck.