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Set in the 1944 ruins dotting the Finnish landscape during World War II, the deliriously fun violence of the extravagant exploitation war flick "Sisu" is deeply nationalistic. Painted in the surprisingly reverent iconography of the prospector, the grizzled, bearded Aatami Korpi ( Jorma Tommila )—fashioned in a simple woolen shirt and suspenders—exists out of place and time when he arrives at a quaint stream. With his horse and little gray dog by his side, he goes through what’s probably a familiar routine: He crouches down in the stream with his gold pan, sifting through the water for specks of gold. In it, he discovers a tiny nugget. He begins to dig holes, excavating the land as gunfire and exploding shells encroach upon his antiquated site. When he finally strikes the motherload, the gold’s glow is enough for him to fall back, crying tears of ecstasy. 

The word “sisu” is nearly untranslatable, but its closest meaning suggests an unbreakable determination, one that seems to even stave off death. Determination is exactly what Korpi will need when, on his way home with his fortune of nuggets hanging on his horse’s saddlebag, he comes across a band of sullen Nazis. The Nazis are hauling a kind of “treasure” (though these captives are not treated as such), a cadre of Finnish women. Despite his best efforts, the soldiers discover his loot, setting off a fight for the mined prize.  

It would be easy to watch writer/director Jalmari Helander ’s viciously bloody flick for its exploitation cinema, spaghetti Western, and 1980s action roots, which owes its riches to Sergio Leone ’s films and “Rambo: First Blood,” respectively. The man of few words character that Tommila portrays is certainly cut from the same cloth as Clint Eastwood's The Man with No Name. Similar to Rambo, he also carries an unlikely resume: Korpi is a former special forces soldier so prolific in his murdering of Russians during the Winter War (he purportedly has killed 300 of them to avenge the murder of his wife and daughter) that they consider him an unbeatable ghost. That information, however, isn’t enough to deter the German company’s savage commander Bruno ( Aksel Hennie ). With the war nearing its end and the specter of war crimes looming large, Bruno sees the gold as his ticket out of future punishment. In their struggle, the film piles bodies as high as a Rambo death count. But "Sisu" is more than its enjoyable carnage. 

Conventionally, prospectors have been symbolic harbingers of colonization and land theft. They arrive to siphon the vital resources of an area belonging to a local indigenous population. In America, gold rushes have been an extension of manifest destiny. But Helander subtly shifts such historical expectations. 

It’s telling, for instance, how Helander and cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos capture the grim Finnish landscape: a desolate hellscape ravaged by craters, villages burned asunder, composed of bodies hanging from telephone poles. The country's entire infrastructure, from the ground to its forms of communication, has been broken by bullets, bombs, and landmines. When Korpi breaks the tranquil ground around the stream to open the film, digging holes that look like craters, he isn’t doing so to smash its physical definition. He is a local man who can be interpreted as taking up the gold to protect one of his country’s few remaining resources. The Nazis are, of course, rendered as the colonizers, attempting to steal the lone treasure they haven’t destroyed in this country. It’s a thrilling subversion of the historical image of the prospector to deploy a deeply nationalistic message. 

When the Nazis commandeer his gold, the fight to retrieve the precious substance imbues this hero with a near-supernatural determination that is as caked on as the blood and mud that finds a home in the crevices of his face. He fights across roads populated by landmines; he survives a hanging; he slices men’s throats underwater to use their escaping air bubbles for breathing so he might avoid capture. His otherworldly strength and resolve provide wonderful laughs, allowing the viewer to take immense pleasure in the gore and carnage dripping from every corner of the frame. Even the narrative’s chapter titles, simple and direct signifiers such as “Minefield” and “The Legend,” along with the movie’s brooding score, possess a similar dogged pursuit to Korpi’s undaunted will. 

The journey to retrieve his treasure also mixes with the plight of the Finnish women the Nazis hold hostage as objects of rape. Their fate and freedom, similar to the gold and not unlike the women in “ Mad Max: Fury Road ,” is another resource the imperialistic Nazis have colonized. Like Korpi, these women (like Mimosa Willamo ) have few lines. And yet, they are not flat characters, even as they exist purely as symbols. That's because Helander has cast actors such as Willamo, Tommila, and Hennie, whose visages are so hardened they evoke the difficult, tortured, and hellish histories of their respective characters without needing much backstory. 

“Sisu” is also outlandishly entertaining, mostly because, contrary to its deeper themes, it isn’t afraid to be nonsensical. The film holds the kind of dumb, action beats and inventive kills, hokey yet fun dialogue that Hollywood used to be so good at producing. It remembers that villains can be wholly evil and that heroes can be bulletproof but still be engaging. "Sisu" doesn’t find the need to explain every plot point and doesn’t mind poking fun at itself. The film creates comfort just by taking you along for the ride. 

In theaters Friday.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Sisu (2023)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language.

Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi

Aksel Hennie as Bruno Helldorf

Jack Doolan as Wolf

Onni Tommila as Schütze

Mimosa Willamo as Aino

• Jalmari Helander

Cinematographer

• Kjell Lagerroos
• Juho Virolainen
• Tuomas Wäinölä

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‘Sisu’ Review: Sweat Wicking

A seemingly invincible former commando goes on a rampage in this blandly gratuitous World War II action movie.

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By Calum Marsh

With “Sisu,” the John Wickification of action movies continues. This brisk, bloody World War II shoot-‘em-up follows the graphic rampage of a taciturn countryside gold prospector and former commando (Jorma Tommila) who, according to local legend, lost his family in a massacre and so “became a ruthless, vengeful soldier,” a “one-man death squad” with more than 300 confirmed kills to his name. Brutal and efficient, our grizzled hero has the blithe, stolid invulnerability of a video game character, dismembering limbs, snapping necks and patching up his own wounds without breaking a sweat.

“Sisu,” written and directed by the Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, is the kind of thriller that’s usually described as “lean.” The setup is austere: During the final stretch of the war, a retreating Nazi platoon happens upon our solitary hero in the barren fields of Finland and steals his gold. They try to kill him. He gets away. The rest of the movie is about him trying to get the gold back. Nazi soldiers are shot, stabbed, crushed, impaled, decapitated, run over and blown up, images that the movie displays with grindhouse glee. You wince to imagine the film’s budget for pyrotechnics and blood effects.

To a certain type of viewer, 90 minutes of Nazi-killing violence may be inherently attractive. And “Sisu” feels designed with an audience’s fervent enthusiasm in mind: It seems to pause for applause after its most gratuitous kills. But 90 minutes of over-the-top mayhem means very little if the mayhem hasn’t been conceived with much wit or imagination, and what prevents “Sisu” from hitting the kinetic stride of a great exploitation flick is a style that feels pedestrian and oddly reserved.

For all its gung-ho violence, the film never feels fraught or nasty enough: It never risks true offense or tastelessness, never takes a gamble on anything that could be interpreted the wrong way or that might sidestep expectations. Somehow it makes killing Nazis feel pretty tame. Take for instance the hero’s dog. It’s a cute hound. Improbably, it manages to avoid harm. It’s not that the movie would be better if the dog died — but it is characteristic of the film to spare the audience the potential discomfort of seeing the consequences of all this violence fall onto anything other than nameless Nazis.

There’s something vaguely feeble about this cautious approach to what is ostensibly an unapologetic gore fest. By the time a liberated band of young female prisoners takes up arms against Nazi captors and blasts them to smithereens — the enemy’s fate never for a moment having been cast in doubt, the prisoners’ victory preordained — you will probably feel exhausted. This moment, like so much of the film, is expressly designed to make you hoot and holler. You’re more likely to groan and cringe.

Sisu Rated R for gruesome carnage, over-the-top mutilation, dismemberment and some strong language. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.

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Brutal John Wick descendant Sisu promises more than it can deliver

The Nazi-killing action definitely gets grim

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It’s 1944. The Nazis are being forced out of Finland, and they’re using scorched-earth tactics, burning down everything and everyone on their way out of the country. They’ve destroyed villages and kidnapped young women, and now they’re looking for more targets to take out their anger on after their humiliating defeat.

Enter Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a grizzled, legendary Finnish veteran of the Winter War with the Soviets. He’s trying his hand at gold prospecting, and he doesn’t want much to do with the present conflict. As a Nazi battalion of tanks and vehicles pass him in the field, he doesn’t pay them much attention. But when a small group of Nazis attempt to steal his gold and kill him, Aatami breaks out his dormant set of murdering skills and gets to work, dispatching the soldiers with ruthless, brutal abandon.

That’s the premise of Sisu , the new English-language Finnish movie looking to capture the hearts of John Wick fans everywhere with its own version of vengeful “retired killer leaves retirement” action. “Sisu” is an untranslatable Finnish concept, as the opening text explains: “It means a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination. Sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost.” In this case, Sisu manifests through Aatami, a quiet, intense man who does not speak until the movie’s final lines of dialogue. Aatami travels through the gorgeous Lapland landscape, which brings a sense of the vastness of the Finnish countryside to Sisu , with the emptiness and desolation heightened by images of burnt villages.

A significant tonal clash holds Sisu back from being the kind of fun midnight action fare the relentless advertising campaign promises. Tommila’s grounded, silent performance as Aatami, along with the fairly conventional way director Jalmari Helander, cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos, and editor Juho Virolainen frame the action, suggest a more serious revenge thriller. At the same time, the booming music, the cheesy chapter titles (“The Legend,” “The Nazis,” “Kill ’Em All”), and some ridiculously silly action beats (such as Aatami hitching a ride on the bottom of a plane by lodging his prospecting pick into it as it takes off) place it more firmly in the area of ludicrously fun action fare.

Aksel Hennie’s menacing performance as the lead Nazi is appropriately repugnant — I was anxiously awaiting his explosive death from start to finish. I wish he had a mustache to twirl, as it would have perfectly fit with the tone he’s going for, a tone Helander only partly commits to in Sisu . Hennie has long excelled at playing characters with a sinister edge under the surface ( Headhunters , The Trip ), and here, he gets to just go all-out as a menacing Nazi. Sisu would have greatly benefited from Helander and co. bringing a similar tone to the rest of the movie.

The action scenes are brutal, showing many, many, many different ways to kill Nazis. There is something righteous in seeing scores of them dying in such visceral ways. The movie’s opening action beat is punctuated by a very satisfying knife through the skull . Many heads and bodies explode. And at one point, Aatami slits a man’s throat underwater so he can suck his victim’s oxygen out of his perforated trachea.

But Helander’s camera work and the fight choreography from veteran stuntman Ouli Kitti are surprisingly restrained in an action movie whose creatives were clearly delighted to find as many ways to kill people as possible. This holds Sisu back from being a cult action gorefest like Project Wolf Hunting — in that bloody movie, director Hong-sun Kim infamously used 2.5 tons of fake blood, and crucially maintained a breezy B-movie tone throughout the splatterfest — or something like the Finnish “Nazis in space” cult hit Iron Sky , which fully embraced its place as midnight action fare.

Sisu ’s creators were clearly heavily inspired by the John Wick movies , especially in the mythmaking around its hero. People speak in hushed tones about Aatami — a Nazi officer explains that Russian soldiers nicknamed the Finnish fighter “The Immortal” for his heroics during the Winter War. It feels essentially the same as the scene from the original John Wick when Michael Nyqvist tells Dean Winters and Alfie Allen the tale of the Baba Yaga, but without the dawning realization of futility (and gleefully over-the-top subtitles) that made that scene so effective and darkly humorous.

Sisu is aimed at an English-speaking audience, opening with expository voiceover narration in English that sets the scene for those who might not be familiar with the conflict between Finland and Nazi Germany. Bizarrely, even the Nazis speak to each other in English. No Finnish is spoken until the very end of the movie, which does remove some potential for a true Finnish alternate-history/revenge narrative. This and other choices leave Sisu stuck between two tones without fully committing to either, promising more than it ultimately delivers.

Sisu is now playing in theatres.

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‘Sisu’ Review: The Road Runner Versus Nazis

'Rare Exports' director Jalmari Helander’s comeback feature is an outrageously entertaining Finnish fantasy of WWII payback.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

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Jalmari Helander hasn’t made a feature since 2014’s “Big Game,” then the most expensive Finnish film to date. It was an unabashed, bombastic, good-humored action crowd-pleaser that indeed pleased crowds — at festivals, while mysteriously failing to catch on with general audiences. Presumably his concept was just too “high” for mainstream viewers to swallow: Though they don’t have any problem with Gerard Butler or Will Smith doing similar honors, it seemed too much to accept a 13-year-old Finn boy singlehandedly rescuing the president of the United States from an obstacle course of assassination peril. 

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It is amid those stark northernmost landscapes that we meet a man who’s “decided to leave the war behind him, for good.” Alone but for his horse and dog, this grizzled prospector ( Jorma Tommila ) is panning and digging for gold. Indeed, he finds a fat vein, his good fortune resulting in a hefty bag of nuggets. But the war is not done with him yet.

Back on the road with that loot, he encounters a substantial German squad encompassing tank, troops and captives (a half-dozen grim-looking young Finnish women) led by glint-eyed Bruno ( Aksel Hennie ) and sleazy subordinate Wolf (Jack Doolan). While they’ve laid waste to local residents just because, they seem inclined to spare this old man, who looks half-dead anyhow … until his mineral stash is discovered. 

These pickings should be easy. But the gray-bearded relic turns out to be a startlingly nimble, resourceful and lethal adversary who dispatches Axis personnel like a patio zapper does mosquitoes. They soon realize they’ve stumbled upon one Aatami, reputed to have taken 300-plus Russian soldiers’ lives after the Red Army killed his family. They dubbed him “the Immortal” for his seeming invincibility, which is rapidly proven here to be no myth. Still, despite skyrocketing casualties and official orders to reverse course, greed drives Bruno to continue pursuit.

Proceeding in chaptered episodes (with titles like “Scorched Earth” and “Kill ’Em All”) of about 10 minutes each, “Sisu” resembles nothing so much as a live-action Road Runner cartoon, albeit with considerably more graphic gore. Each offers a set-piece in which Aatami turns preposterous odds to his advantage, whether in a minefield, surviving a hanging or clinging to the outside of an airplane. 

The combination of deadpan tenor — our hero is so laconic, he doesn’t speak a single word until the fadeout — and extreme violence played as precise slapstick manages to avoid monotony through Helander’s dextrous handling. It also renders any quibbles re plausibility moot. Like Tarantino’s “Basterds” without all the yada-yada, this is no history lesson, but purely a fantasy against bona fide evildoers. There are certainly no “good Nazis” here to feel sorry for. And yes, the captive (presumably raped) women do get to exact their own special revenge.

“Sisu’s” outre fun is accentuated by all the first-class design contributors, from Kjell Lagerroos’ very handsome (though never prettified) photography and Juho Virolainen’s razor-sharp editing to the range of viscerally impressive stunt and FX work. Juri Seppa and Tuomas Wainola’s original score incorporates diverse influences while principally evoking the classic lone-gunman cool of Morricone’s spaghetti Western soundtracks. (Among visuals, one notable cineaste in-joke is a climactic homage to “Dr. Strangelove.”) 

Reviewed online, Sept. 15, 2022. In Toronto Film Festival (Midnight Madness). Running time: 91 MIN.

• Production: (Finland) A Sony release of a Stage 6 Films presentation of a Subzero Film Entertainment production, in association with Good Chaos. (World sales: WME Independent, Beverly Hills.) Producer: Petri Jokiranta. Executive producers: Mike Goodridge, Gregory Ouanhon, Antonio Salas.
• Crew: Director, writer: Jalmari Helander. Camera: Kjell Lagerroos. Editor: Juho Virolainen. Music: Juri Seppa, Tuomas Wainola. 
• With: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan, Mimosa Willamo, Onni Tommila. (English dialogue)

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Sisu Reviews

Laconic as its protagonist, the film deploys a choreographed and stylized display of viscera and blood-dripping limbs to create something like “A Thousand and One Ways to Die in War.” [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2024

The film is only 93 minutes long but every 15 minutes takes us to a new chapter. What catches your eye is the spectacular cinematography by Kjell Lagerroos. The film also enjoys being barbaric and brutal, it makes bloodshed looks beautiful.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 27, 2023

A scandalously entertaining movie where blood is spilled like beer at a bachelor's party... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 8, 2023

Nazi-killing has never felt so frustratingly dull.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

Sisu is unadulterated, grindhouse fun, and I for one hope we see more films like it very soon.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 30, 2023

Sisu offers a 91-minute massacre with deftly captured shots and wonderfully skilled action pieces, delivering heaps of blood-drenched fun. If Violent Night’s Santa had a Finnish cousin, it would be Sisu’s badass Aatami Korpi.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2023

As long as you're not hung up on things like whether a body used as a human shield can stop .50 caliber rounds, or if one can suck oxygen from a sliced trachea, and if you enjoy Nazis being exterminated (and who doesn't?), Sisu may very well be your jam.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2023

We know by now that messing with a man who has lost his family and has a legendary nick name is a bad idea (he also owns a dog, and yes, the Nazis try to kill it), so we sit back for the blood bath, something Sisu delivers in buckets.

Full Review | Sep 6, 2023

“Sisu” is gritty, blatant, bloody action cinema. It is a reckoning for sins that can never be exonerated and must never be forgotten. It is poetic vengeance delivered with lean, masterful precision.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2023

This is what would happen if Quentin Tarantino had ever directed a Clint Eastwood western.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 5, 2023

It's all very silly, but it's so over-the-top that it becomes blissfully entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2023

The plot is so concentrated. It’s haiku with machineguns.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 2, 2023

What a brilliant role this is for Tommila, a crusty old man with the unkillable quality of Keanu Reeves' John Wick... with the inventiveness for killing with whatever is at hand of Liam Neeson's Taken character Brian Mills.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 1, 2023

Sisu is many things, just like the term itself in its native Finland — and impossible to stop watching is one of them.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2023

Writer-director Jalmari Helander’s blood-and-guts revenge fantasy is the history revision you never knew you needed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 29, 2023

Most movies would benefit from having more scenes where Nazis are mercilessly mowed down. This movie would benefit from having anything in addition to that.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 28, 2023

Rather than being directed to avert your gaze from the effects of violence, you’re watching it magnified to the point of the cartoonish. It’s lavishly embellished with blood and gore. Talk about a guilty pleasure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 28, 2023

Helander’s particular interests seem to be in showcasing extravagant, gory kills, considering the film is one overtly long chase sequence.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 27, 2023

With its very attractive running time – why have so many films drifted from this once-standard length? – Sisu chalks up as an enjoyable wartime adventure that offers a feast for war movie buffs who adore the sight of WW2 German military hardware.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 27, 2023

At 90 minutes it gets the job done and then some with a minimum of messing about. If Finland wants to be the home of thrilling pulp action, they're off to a rip-roaring start.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

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Sisu review – one deadly Finn meets a lot of exploding Nazis

This gleefully gory B-movie romp follows a grizzled prospector as he exacts revenge in inventive ways on the troops who stole his gold

S ometimes you need a film with nuance and sensitivity, a meditation on the nature of human frailty. And sometimes all you want is a grizzled Finnish gold prospector relentlessly slaughtering cartoon evil Nazis in a variety of inventive and messy ways. Anyone in the mood for an unabashedly basic B-movie romp could do a lot worse than this predominantly English-language Finnish production. The story unfolds during the ragged final days of the second world war and pits stoic ex-commando Aatami (Jorma Tommila), nicknamed “the Immortal”, against the retreating German troops who have the poor judgment to steal his gold, taunt his dog and leave him for dead.

The title, Sisu , is a Finnish word that roughly translates as grit, determination, bravery and smarts. Aatami displays all of these traits, plus a knack for turning almost anything he can lay his hands on into a weapon. It’s graphic and gory; the camera is pelted with the assorted body parts of exploding Nazis; the sound design favours lots of extravagantly squelchy blood splattering.

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‘Sisu’ Is the Bloody, Nazi-Killing Movie You Need to See

• By David Fear

The thing about Nazis is: Fuck those guys .

Finland began World War II by fighting off the Soviet forces that tried to invade the country in the “Winter War ” from 1939 to 1940. They were conscripted by the Axis powers to fight alongside Hitler’s army until 1944, the year of the Moscow Armistice — that treaty not only allied Finnish troops with the Russians, it started a major campaign that sought to drive the Nazis out of the country once and for all. This was known as the “Lapland War,” for those of you playing along at home.

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It’s not long before he runs into a gaggle of Nazis, led by a leather-duster-wearing commander ( The Martian ’s Aksel Hennie). They let the prospector pass unharmed, knowing that he’s about to run into another patrol further down the road. Let those guys tale care of him, the officer says. Sure enough, the man runs into a second group of soldiers. They figure they’ll shoot him and claim his loot for themselves. The prospector has another idea: How about he sticks a giant knife through one of their skulls, uses several troops as a human shield against machine-gun fire, then blows the entire top of the last guy’s head clean off?

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That’s a vast understatement, and the majority of Helander’s glorious bastard of a war epic pivots between putting Korpi through all sorts of bodily injury (he’s shot, hung, set on fire, nearly drowned, and takes a grenade to the chest) and letting this superhuman killing machine go full-blown Terminator on his enemies. All Der Führer ’s tanks and all Der Führer ‘s men can’t keep this ex-commander from tearing them limb from limb again. Or from throwing landmines at their heads. Or from slitting their throats, sticking his pickax in their sternum, or attaching them to a plummeting megaton bomb. Once those aforementioned female prisoners get in on the Nazi-slaughtering action as well, all bets are off.

Sisu is beyond cartoonish in terms of its ultraviolence, which becomes more of an end and less of a means before the final villain gets his righteous comeuppance. It’s also so ludicrous, and almost infectiously gleeful in its near-biblical anti-Nazi bloodlust, that you can feel yourself giving in to the anything-goes state of mind — and sticking around just to see the creative ways the movie figures out to destroy these racist degenerates next. If screen carnage isn’t your jam, you can let this good-versus-evil splatterfest pass. For those of us who’ve spent way too much time pining for white supremacists to suffer the consequences of their actions and their prejudices, however, the only question we have for Sisu is: Where were you five years ago?

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Sisu (2022)

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'Sisu' asks: What's more fun than watching a grizzled old guy mow down Nazis?

Sometimes it’s rewarding to watch a challenging movie like “Beau Is Afraid,” which requires you to try to figure out what is going on from literally its first frame.

And sometimes it’s an absolute blast to just sit back, turn off your brain for an hour and a half and watch an old guy take out a small army of Nazis with a pickax and grim determination.

So it is with “Sisu,” Jalmari Helander’s outrageous — and outrageously fun — film. It spills blood like it was beer at a bachelor party, but with enough of a wink and a nod to assure us that Helander isn’t taking the whole thing so seriously that we can’t laugh a little.

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What does 'sisu' mean in English?

The film begins with on-screen text telling us that “sisu” is a Finnish word for which there is no direct translation. Yes, the no-translation bit is often a copout to add a little artificial intrigue, but it’s not a fatal flaw here. The loose meaning is white-knuckled courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Invincibility seems to play a role, as well — maybe even immortality.

This context will come in handy. We meet Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), for whom the word “grizzled” could have been invented, as he and his horse and dog look for gold in northern Finland. It’s 1944, and the war is all but over. Desperate Nazis are in retreat, and burning, looting and pillaging everything in their path.

Aatami is an old soldier, we learn, but has left war behind. Or so he thought. As he digs fruitlessly the sounds of battle inch closer and closer. He blithely ignores a squadron of fighter planes that soar overhead.

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Here's what triggers the bloodbath in 'Sisu'

Then one day he strikes gold, and lots of it. He packs it into bags and heads to civilization. Except he is met by Nazis along the way. They have kidnapped several young women and seem gleeful in their evil.

At first they let Aatami pass, but eventually figure out what he has in his saddlebags. They take some of his gold.

And then he kills them. Brutally. Knife-through-the-skull kind of thing. Aatami escapes, and Bruno (Aksel Hennie), the SS officer leading the Nazis, gets word from headquarters that they are not to pursue Aatami. Did you tell them he killed seven of our men, Bruno asks the radio operator?

Yes, he says. They say we were lucky.

Meanwhile Aino (Mimosa Willamo), one of the captured women, explains to the Nazis who Aatami really is: a former soldier who killed 300 Russians after they murdered his family. He will not stop, at any cost, to get revenge.

Is he immortal, a soldier asks? No. He just refuses to die.

It’s not for lack of trying on the part of Bruno and his henchman Wolf (Jack Doolan). Bruno sees a path to buy his way out of postwar prosecution and so ignores orders, continuing to chase Aatami.

As the Grail Knight says in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” he chose … poorly.

Hardly any dialog: Aatami does his talking with his pickax

Aatami is relentless. He takes punches. He gets blown up. He hangs with his pickax from a plane in flight. And still he fights on.

Tommila plays Aatami as the strong, silent type — so silent that he doesn’t speak until there’s about a minute left in the film. He does his talking with his fists. And his knife. And, of course, his pickax. There is a great scene in which he is taking his time with one Nazi when a couple more pull up on motorcycle.

That’s him, they say, and stare. Aatami merely looks at them, points his pickax like the Grim Reaper with his scythe and grunts. The two drop their guns and flee.

Aino seems to have a little sisu in her, as well; Willamo is compelling in brief appearances.

The violence is gory enough to make the audience squirm, and just cartoonish enough to give it permission to laugh. Like the “John Wick” movies, it’s really one brutal set piece after another, though the choreography is not as poetic here.

It is fun, though, and fully nuts. In case there was any question, that’s a compliment.

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'Sisu' 3.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Jalmari Helander.

Cast: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Mimosa Willamo.

Rating: R for strong bloody violence, gore and language.

How to watch: In theaters Friday, April 28.

Reach Goodykoontz at  [email protected] . Follow him on Facebook  @GoodyOnFilm  and on Twitter  @goodyk . Subscribe to  the weekly movies newsletter .

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Sisu review: Like Nazis getting tortured? Then this bloody action movie is for you

• Great action scenes
• Brutal kills
• Tight direction
• Beautiful cinematography
• Slow pacing
• Repetitive at times

Sisu  is not only an ode to classic modern action films like  Mad Max: Fury Road and John Wick , but it’s able to separate itself as something else entirely thanks to its grit and dedication to its setting. The movie from Finnish director Jalmari Helander is a wild, awe-inducing journey of literal blood, sweat, and tears that will leave any action fan clamoring for more.

• An orgy of violence that’s beautifully executed

Not your ordinary Nazi revenge movie

Is sisu worth watching.

In  Sisu , Helander shows a deft hand at action in moderation. The film, which clocks in at an efficient hour-and-a-half runtime, takes place in 1945, asthe Nazi regime is enacting a scorched-earth policy on Finland. Our protagonist, a Finnish ex-soldier named Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), who rarely speaks, strikes literal gold in Finland’s wilderness and must venture into the city to cash in his treasure. Things take a bloody turn for the worst, though, when a group of Nazis want to kill him and take his gold.

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An orgy of violence that’s beautifully executed

Much like  Fury Road or John Wick: Chapter 4 ,  Sisu ‘s beauty is in its execution, not the intricacies of its plot. There’s rarely any dialogue at all, but there doesn’t need to be because Helander’s direction creates a tense, blood-pumping escapade full of outstanding action and stomach-churning gore. From land mines being hurled to throats getting slit underwater to a man intentionally lighting himself on fire,  Sisu isn’t afraid of being outrageous with its action. The kills feel sudden, bloody, and almost comically gory, rather than choreographed dances of violence. It’s gritty and hard-edged; if you don’t want to see a horse’s exploded rib cage, this movie isn’t for you.

The action of  Sisu  stems from Aatami’s one-man battle against the Nazi squadron, who are characterized as the epitome of pure evil. Aatami is a war legend known by the Nazis and feared by all; he was nicknamed “The Immortal” due to his seeming inability to die. He has killed hundreds of Russian soldiers as a one-man army, and now he’s hell-bent on sending these Nazis to the next life. With Tommila’s wonderfully brutal performance as Aatami, viewers are introduced to an action hero who feels as if John Wick himself were dropped into the middle of World War II.

While  Sisu ‘s action is something that has to be seen to be believed, its willingness to slow down and mull over the setting is what separates it as a supremely unique survival thriller. Aatami is brutalized in every way imaginable by the Nazi horde, and Helander pulls no punches in showing the extent of his suffering. Yet, for as wild as the film’s action is, it’s almost startling how much Helander holds the camera to reminisce over the land. The Finnish director obviously finds the story to be a personal one, as his contempt for the Nazis is shown time and time again. What results is a Tarantino-esque story of revenge with a more personal twinge of justified hatred.

Helander’s touch is evident throughout the film, whether the action is heavy or not. The film, in fact, doesn’t begin with a wild set piece like many action films are tempted to do. Rather, it opens with an introduction to the land, to a man toiling away at his work in something akin to the opening of There Will Be Blood .  Sisu ‘s ability to let the viewer simmer on its contrasting imagery results in a unique piece of action filmmaking, one where blood, dirt, and dread are the primary filmic language. Wide shots hold on the beauty of Finland’s expansive, yet unforgiving region of Lapland, creating a contrast between the war-torn noises and flames. The film reminds me of Robert Eggers’ excellent 2022 viking movie The Northman , with its brutal imagery coinciding with a guttural soundscape.

At times,  Sisu falls into its own trap of feeling a bit regimented and on -the nose about its own epic stature The film is split up into chapters, resulting in abrupt cuts along the storyline that, while may seem grand at times, frequently are more like an unnecessary flourish. It could also benefit from stronger pacing, as its quieter moments begin to toe the line between repetitive and effective as we near the final act of the film. Nevertheless, Sisu  continually ups its own stakes and action, never letting the viewer down from another outrageous kill.

While  Sisu isn’t a perfect film, it’s an efficient action flick for people who’ve already seen John Wick: Chapter 4 and want something a little bit different. It’s an adrenaline-fueled story of rage and revenge, and it proves to be a beautiful and fun, yet brutal historical romp to hell and back.

Sisu is currently in select theaters nationwide.

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Fight scenes are the backbone of any action movie and come in all different shapes and sizes. Fight scenes can be loud, violent versions of controlled chaos, as evidenced in the John Wick movies. They can be smaller in scale and confined to one space, like the elevator sequence in Drive. Martial artists such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan proved that the elaborate choreography of hand-to-hand combat can be as graceful and poetic as a dance.

Whatever your preference is, fight scenes have a way of wowing the audience through brutal, visceral actions. Stunt teams and choreographers continue to raise the bar on what's possible in an action movie. To honor these cinematic sequences, Digital Trends ranks the best fight scenes captured in action movies. 7. The one-take stairwell sequence in Atomic Blonde (2017) Atomic Blonde | The 10-Minute Single Take Fight Scene in 4K HDR

We're living through something of an action movie renaissance, which means that it's a great time to be a fan of those kinds of movies. John Wick and the Mission: Impossible franchise have kick-started an entire wave of knockoffs, and while not all of these movies are great, the fact that we're getting so many that have basically nothing to do with superheroes is definitely a good sign.

Boy Kills World is one recent example of a gonzo, irreverent action movie about one man's obsessive drive for revenge. If you saw that movie and felt like you were picking up everything that it put down, we're recommending three more that are just as great ... and almost as bloody. Mandy (2018) MANDY - Official Trailer [HD] | Now Streaming | A Shudder Exclusive

There's nothing wrong with a gripping and compelling Oscar-winning drama that's full of complex characters ... but sometimes you just wanna watch stuff get blown up. You wanna see high-speed car chases. You wanna practically feel the shrapnel fly past your face. Artful films like Oppenheimer and The Iron Claw certainly have their place, but that place isn't here. Instead, we're diving into some of the best action movies you can stream right now for free.

Thanks to ad-supported streaming services like Amazon Freevee, Tubi, Pluto TV, and more, there's a huge selection of great free action movies streaming right now. Whether you want to watch a guns-blazing revenge movie, giant animals attacking unsuspecting victims, or even a kinetic video game adaptation, we've got you covered. So, what are the best action movies streaming right now completely for free? Read on to find out.

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Let’s Watch Some Nazis Explode

This past weekend, Lionsgate released the Finnish action movie Sisu on a little over a thousand screens and made around $3.25 million, good enough to break into the box-office top ten. That’s not quite a wide release, but it isn’t exactly small, either. This is one of those titles designed to go after a specific audience of film-savvy genre fiends; the studio has reportedly set up private screenings for influencer types and even shipped a print to Quentin Tarantino himself. It’s another example that in today’s age, cult movies no longer happen organically; there’s no slow and steady build through years of people sneaking away to their friends’ rec rooms to discover strange, previously unheard-of fare. No, even cult movies have opening weekends now.

The good news is that Sisu deserves that extra push. It’s a largely wordless World War II thriller about a grizzled, haunted loner who strikes a massive vein of gold in the remote reaches of Lapland, only to find himself tormented by a platoon of retreating Nazis. The year is 1944, and the war is basically lost for the Germans, who are laying waste to everything in their path. They don’t think much of our hero, Aatami Korpi (the beautifully weathered Jorma Tommila), when they first come across him and his adorable one-eyed dog. “Grandfather,” they call him. Of course, it turns out that he’s a legendary Finnish commando who lost his mind after his home and family were destroyed and became a one-man death squad referred to by his former Russian nemeses as Koschel , “the Immortal.” As the Nazis chase him, he picks them off, sometimes individually and sometimes en masse.

The basic idea here is nothing new, and Sisu could have easily become a repetitive, standard-issue killfest, enough to satisfy genre fiends but of little value otherwise. What makes it work is director Jalmari Helander’s increasingly creative ideas about how his hero should go about wasting the Nazis in his path, as the film graduates from humble head stabbings and limb snappings to more ambitious and explosive mayhem. So much so that it all starts to border on a philosophical treatise about survival and perseverance. The word sisu , we’re told by some opening text, is an impossible-to-define Finnish concept denoting a “white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination.” The text then adds: “Sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost.”

The film’s action embodies this idea repeatedly. In each circumstance, Aatami must first suffer the tortures of the damned — sometimes at his own hands — before he can prevail. So there’s a tense, complicated emotional journey to each sequence: We’re not just eagerly anticipating what new horrors our hero will unleash on others, but also what new horrors will be unleashed on him . And the director’s insistence on upping the ante with each incident means that we’re fully in the realm of the surreal by the end, which is saying a lot for a movie whose first act features one man slicing open another’s neck underwater and then using him as a breathing apparatus.

Some will say Sisu recalls Mad Max: Fury Road or Inglorious Basterds (and with chapter headings delivered in bold, colorful western-style lettering, the film certainly seems to have borrowed a page from Tarantino’s stylebook), but I kept imagining it as what might have happened had Sergio Leone been alive to direct Crank: High Voltage . The gonzo stylization ramps up as the onscreen action becomes more unhinged, and Helander enhances the genre theatrics with occasional bits of visual poetry. He works in open, desolate spaces and captures brooding skies and endless horizons, where distant cities burn with ghostly foreboding. But he doesn’t keep his action at a distance. If anything, he closes in to almost uncomfortable degrees, rubbing our faces in the dirt, dust, sweat, metal, grime, and blood of this world. As a result, Sisu veers between the elemental and the ethereal. Once it’s over, it feels like you must have dreamed it.

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‘Sisu’ Review: ‘Rare Exports’ Director Gleefully Takes Out Nazis in Bonkers Action Film

Director Jalmari Helander's 'Sisu' is an absurd action film about one man killing a whole mess of Nazis.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

From the first moments of Sisu , writer-director Jalmari Helander ( Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale , Big Game ) focuses on the determination of Aatami Korpi ( Jorma Tommila ). Living in the wilderness of Finland’s Lapland region during the end of World War II, Aatami seems set on avoiding the world around him for as long as possible. As warplanes fly low overhead with a staggering roar, Aatami acts as though he has heard nothing, continuing his search for gold. The scars of the past are still upon Aatami—both literally and figuratively—and when he finally strikes gold, we see the glimmer of joy in the man who has isolated himself from the destruction occurring around him.

At the beginning of Sisu , we are told that the title refers to a Finnish word that means a “white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination,” and that “Sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost.” For the next hour-and-a-half, Helander will show Sisu incarnate through Aatami, who almost acts as the Second World War’s John Rambo, systematically destroying those who get in his way.

Once Aatami has his pockets and horse packed with gold, he soon comes across a Nazi patrol led by SS Obersturmführer Bruno Helldorf ( Aksel Hennie ), who vastly underestimate the determination of Aatami. Set in 1944, when the Nazis are clearly losing the war, Helldorf and his men know that their end is near, and upon seeing Aatami’s gold, realize they might be able to maintain some wealth once the war is over. However, Aatami is no ordinary man, and Sisu soon becomes a battle between this older man and this entire Nazi regime that takes place on land, water, and through the sky.

RELATED: 'Sisu' Trailer Promises Action-Packed Adventure With Gold, Nazis, and a Cute Dog

Helander gleefully embraces the absurdity and violence of this scenario. Sometimes, the mayhem on display can be shocking and brutal, as when the Nazis force their men to walk through a minefield, or when Aatami has to repair his wounds in gnarly fashion. But other times, the violence is so over-the-top and wild, Sisu almost feels like Finland’s answer to RRR , as it almost seems like Aatami is an unstoppable force who can find a way out of any scenario thrown his way. Aesthetically, Helander makes Sisu part Spaghetti Western, part grimy war film, and part Looney Tunes-ian ridiculous adventure. Much like how Helander took Santa Claus lore and turned it into the ludicrous Rare Exports , he takes a similar approach with this Nazi-hunting tale—mixing history with sheer insanity.

But even when Sisu cranks up the preposterous nature of this story, it’s Tommila that keeps this take grounded (as much as it can be). Like a 1940s John Wick, we learn what Aatami has had to deal with, the past that he’s attempted to leave behind, and the understandable rage that he feels towards those who have stated themselves to be “better” than the others around them. Aatami at times seems like an unstoppable killing machine, but Tommila plays the character as a man just attempting to live through the day. He will kill who he needs to, protect those that need help, and find do-it-yourself ways to keep breathing for a few more minutes, and yet, we know he’d much rather be counting his earnings with his trusty dog by his side.

But look, this isn’t an attempt to tell a nuanced story, but rather, a way for Helander to show some of the most over-the-top and insane murders of Nazis ever committed to screen in bonkers fashion. In fact, Helander could’ve easily just named this movie “Fuck Nazis,” and it would’ve made perfect sense. Again, this is a WWII movie from the guy who made Rare Exports and a film that is debuting at TIFF’s Midnight Madness presentation, so don’t expect subtlety with Sisu .

Helander's latest film is a gory, often disgusting, and ridiculous action film that revels in its absurdity, a film that simply wants to kill Nazis in new and interesting ways, and achieves that goal wholeheartedly. Sisu is certainly ridiculous, but sometimes it's just fun to watch an obscene amount of Nazis get what's coming to them.

Sisu is in theaters now.

‘Sisu’ Film Review: Wild Action and Weak Dramatics Make for a Thrilling But Frustrating Crowd-Pleaser

Toronto Film Festival 2022: Packed houses will enjoy the genre thrills in this violent war picture from the director of “Rare Exports,” but watching at home alone will spotlight its flaws

Nazis die and Finns triumph in the Finnish WW2 thriller “Sisu,” a spaghetti Western–style action-adventure set in the Lapland plains of Finland. In this polished genre exercise, a stubborn Finnish gold prospector runs away from, and also violently dispatches, a group of Nazis during the war’s concluding months.

Writer-director Jalmari Helander (“Big Game,” “Rare Exports”) doesn’t really develop his post-post-modern pastiche beyond its basic high-concept premise, so “Sisu” — premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival — never becomes more than an energetically realized live-action cartoon. Thankfully, Helander and his collaborators deliver a good-enough potboiler, thanks especially to the invigorating contributions of cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos and editor Juho Virolainen.

There’s not much more to “Sisu”, but it certainly looks good and moves briskly from one action scene to the next. 

That said, you might be disappointed by “Sisu” if you expect it to develop, either in terms of narrative momentum or dramatic tension. There’s certainly no point in judging Helander’s latest based on its lightly worn national pride. An establishing intertitle breaks down the Finnish word “Sisu,” which we’re told “cannot be translated” beyond “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination” that “manifests itself when all hope is lost.” Later, a Finnish prisoner of war off-handedly says that the tight-lipped Finnish ex-soldier Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) “refuses to die”: “We have a word for that in Finland, but it cannot be translated.” 

Aatami leads by example, but his story doesn’t really take viewers anywhere that they won’t expect given its second-hand nature. Set during 1944, “Sisu” follows Aatami as he struggles to cash in on a rich gold deposit that he finds in the middle of the desolate Lapland. He’s almost immediately found and pursued by a troop of ruthless Nazis, led by Aksel Hennie’s macho SS Obersturmfuhrer, who want to use the Finn’s gold to escape a looming death sentence. Hennie’s group travel, by tank and truck, with a group of Finnish female prisoners-of-war, at least one of whom is molested (off-camera) by the Nazis.  

Helander quickly sets up what motivates these characters in a few early scenes. Aatami’s too greedy to abandon his claim, but he’s also human enough, as we see when he sends his adorable grey poodle mix running away before he confronts some Nazis. Hennie’s men also don’t need to say much to establish their concerns, since Helander shows us several Nazi corpses strung up on telephone poles.

The Finnish POWs don’t really say or do much, which makes it hard to care about a perfunctory later scene where they strike a “Right Stuff”–style pose and fire some guns. That’s the kind of fourth-draft story beat that jaded action fans might expect from “Avengers: Endgame,” so it’s sort of disappointing to see that kind of tokenism in Helander’s relatively spartan spectacular.  

“Sisu” mostly works on its own terms, which makes its apparent shortcomings all the more frustrating. Everything inevitably feels like a showcase for story-telling economy and technical craftsmanship, so it’s unsurprising that the chases and action scenes overshadow almost everything that requires a relatively deep emotional investment. It’s great fun to see Aatami tumble onto and dive under Nazi transport vehicles, but you might not feel as excited whenever Tomilla’s character isn’t a human-shaped object in restless motion.

There’s also some humor scattered throughout “Sisu,” but it inadvertently underscores how one-note the rest of the movie tends to be. A particularly grisly early scene only climaxes after Hennie’s character forces some reluctant Nazi cannon fodder to follow Aatami past a field littered with deadly landmines. The surreal bloodshed that ensues won’t disappoint fans of comic violence, but the scene’s cutesy punchline — “How many mines did you bury here?” “All of them.” — only confirms the filmmakers’ unapologetically shallow presentation.

The rest of “Sisu” plays out like one long chase scene that’s occasionally interrupted by dramatic tangents. Helander spends just enough time humanizing his Nazi antagonists, whose blinkered tough-guy posturing speaks for them whenever they squint and/or scowl into the far distance. It’s also telling that Helander cast Onni Tormila, Jorma’s son, as a Nazi in “Sisu” after featuring both actors in his two previous features. (Helander is also Onni’s maternal uncle.) Helander’s Nazis may not be more complex than Aatami, but they’re about as well-framed and dramatically posed. Everybody looks good in extreme close-ups, and that’s sometimes enough to keep the slowest interstitial scenes moving forward to the next big bang.

Rowdy festival audiences will probably adore “Sisu” since it looks gorgeous and never really slows down long enough to be dull. Everyone else’s mileage will likely vary based on the size of the screen and the crowd. Helander’s latest remains impressive on its own terms thanks to its virtuosic patchwork style, but if you watch “Sisu” at home, your mind could wander to your bookshelves, where you’ll maybe find some of the filmmakers’ acknowledged influences, like “Rambo: First Blood” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” “Sisu” will do, in a pinch, but it’s not fresh enough to warrant a second look.

“Sisu” makes its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

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‘Sisu’ Review: This Fun and Gory Riff on ‘Fury Road’ Pits a Grizzled Finnish Man Against a Bunch of Nazis

David ehrlich.

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A “they pissed off the wrong guy” movie so pure and simple that its sub-genre almost doubles as a plot synopsis, Jalmari Helander ’s “Sisu” is basically what might happen if someone transplanted “Fury Road” into Finland , lost 90 percent of what made that film into an unrepeatable force of nature, and tried to make up the difference by exploding as many Nazis as possible in outrageously violent fashion.

If you think that sounds like a decent trade-off for 91 minutes’ worth of brainless midnight fun, then I’ve got some good news for you: “Sisu” does exactly what it says on the tin.

Straightforward and unpretentious to the point that its hero doesn’t isn’t even afforded dialogue — let alone a meaningful character arc — this is the kind of movie that starts with a tank fighting a gold miner before escalating to “Dr. Strangelove” levels of destruction. “All killer, no filler” would be a wildly generous way of describing Helander’s latest bid for an international breakout (previous efforts include the fun Christmas chiller “Rare Exports” and the “fun” Samuel L. Jackson vehicle “Big Game” ), but “some killer, some filler” is enough to get the job done when that job is liquifying Nazis into geysers of thick CGI blood.

“Sisu” wastes no time setting proper expectations for the smooth-brained thrill ride to come. First, Helander’s film kicks off with a definition of its untranslatable title (“Sisu” is a local term for the sort of impossible courage and determination that a person is able to summon when all hope is lost), and some maps to establish proper context for its setting (the year is 1944 and the Nazis are being forced out of Finland, but they’re wreaking as much havoc as they possibly can as they slouch to the border).

Then — in a bit of brute-force storytelling so blunt that it lends this silly movie a vaguely mythic veneer — Helander busts out some trailer-ready voiceover to set his story in motion. “Deep within the wilderness of Lapland,” the narrator intones, “there is a man who has decided to leave the war behind him, for good.”

Like most of the words spoken in Helander’s unapologetic bid for international attention, this voiceover is delivered in deeply accented English; while the barrier of subtitles may only be one inch tall, scaling it would force American audiences to put in more work than any other part of this film requires of them. Then again, stabbing Nazis in the head might be the closest thing this planet has to a universal language.

And let’s be clear, the aforementioned man — a bearded gold prospector named Aatami Korpi, played by Jorma Tommila in a performance that feels like a cross between Daniel Plainview and John Wick, complete with an adorable canine companion — stabs an absolute scheiße-ton of Nazis. But that’s only because they force his hand. A grizzled old veteran who retired from the Nazi-stabbing business after the bloodshed followed him home (the character’s backstory is so basic that “Sisu” hardly bothers to fill it in), Aatami has lost interest in the war by the time the film begins. He now spends his days panning around Lapland’s primordial bronze fields in search of the motherlode that might buy him a better life, and the bombers that fly overhead show him the same apathy that a drifting rain cloud might show to a rock.

When Aatami finds what could be the most comically oversized gold deposit in film history, his only thought is to get it to the nearest bank before anyone can steal it from him. Alas, he walks smack into Immortan Bruno’s (Aksel Hennie) sad Nazi convoy — a line of vehicles full of weapons, booze, and abducted Finnish war brides — and the disgraced German leader immediately recognizes Aatami’s fortune as his passport to a country where he and his men won’t be hanged for their war crimes. It does take Bruno a little while (and a lot of casualties) to figure out that Aatami is a local legend known for his inability to be killed, but “Sisu” is happy to offer its villain a generous heaping of teachable moments.

The action is spare but absurdly visceral, and each of the film’s various chapters — which boast instructive titles like “Minefield” — highlight a different and increasingly demented kind of murder. A semi-realistic scuffle in which Aatami beats several Nazis to death with a metal helmet gives way to an underwater fight sequence so absurd that I half-expected to see Aquaman swim through the background.

A more gradual evolution of Aatami’s mythic nature might have prevented “Sisu” from sagging through a damp middle act that separates the “grounded” action of the opening chapters from the cartoon mayhem of its climactic ones, but Helander shoots the carnage with just enough creativity to ensure that every setpiece has its own unique lifeforce. Hard as it is to care about what’s happening, it’s always perfectly easy to understand, and the spartan nature of Helander’s storytelling allows the film’s violence to emerge as its primary form of expression until the Pollock-like spatters of Nazi blood that erupt from each of Aatami’s victims assume a narrative dimension of their own.

Legible choreography also helps to cut through the gray digital pall that’s draped over so many cost-conscious action films in the CGI era. There’s no color to the night-time scene in which Aatami manages to slip out of a noose, for example, but Helander squeezes a few sick drops of flesh-oozing fun from every little detail of his hero’s desperate escape.

The chase sequence that later reinvigorates “Sisu” down the home stretch is so indebted to “Fury Road” that Lionsgate should probably give George Miller some percentage of every ticket sale, but there’s no use complaining about glorified “Mad Max” cosplay when it allows for a giddily satisfying close-quarters tank fight that privileges slapstick over spectacle. Even at just 91 minutes “Sisu” might still be overextended for something that essentially amounts to a one-note joke with a mega-ton punchline, but if Helander is able to accomplish this much with this little, perhaps there’s reason to hope that someone in Hollywood will finally give him the chance that he seems to be auditioning for with every film he makes.

Lionsgate will release “Sisu” in theaters on Friday, April 28.

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Sisu Review

A bit of narration at the start of Sisu makes it clear: this is gonna be some mythic shit. World War II is on its last legs and the flailing Nazis, we’re told, have adopted a scorched-earth policy as they retreat from Finland, burning down everything in their path. But then: “Deep in the wilderness of Lapland, there is a man…” And so we meet Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a former soldier who’s turned his back on the battle. He’s here with just his horse and his dog, living off the land, searching for gold. And soon enough, when a group of Nazis attempt to kill him, we see what he’s capable of. It involves stabbing a knife right through one of their skulls, shooting a shotgun up through another one’s head, and using landmines as explosive Frisbees. So begins 91 minutes of gnarly, pulpy, relentlessly entertaining fun.

Director Jalmari Helander pulls no punches — or kicks or shootings or stabbings — wallowing in excess and rarely taking any of it seriously. As Korpi gets into scrape after scrape, outwitting the Nazis as he goes, slicing and dicing across all manner of terrains, each time escaping seemingly inescapable situations, you increasingly wonder, “Okay, so how the hell is he gonna get out of this one?” And yet he does, each time reality and logic losing little bits of integrity, unapologetically.

Ultimately, it’s all about the effortlessly charismatic Jorma Tommila.

This is a slight but tight epic, dealing in firm absolutes. Korpi, a one-man army, is pitted not just against the Nazis, but against the landscape they’ve devastated. Riding his horse past corpses hanging from telephone poles. Cooking dinner by his tepee while planes roar overhead. Grimacing at the glow of distant explosions on the horizon. The bad guys, meanwhile, are exactly that, no more, no less. There are no grey areas here — these are very much your dyed-in-the-wool evil Nazis, no sides to them, no humanity peeking through. Across the board, Sisu doesn’t offer up wholly fleshed-out characters, and for the most part that’s not a problem — the archetypes work. In the case though of a group of female sex slaves, stuck in Nazi trucks for the most part, some richer character work wouldn’t have gone amiss, especially considering that particular subject matter.

Your take on Sisu might depend on how much silliness you can stomach — by the time it reaches its Looney Tunes ending, any semblance of reality has gleefully skipped away. But this film knows exactly what it is, and is so much fun. It is fantastically (but not upsettingly) violent, the bountiful dismemberments and impalements heightened by squelchy sound design, and there are brilliant practical effects — it’s a prosthetics playground.

Ultimately, though, it’s all about the effortlessly charismatic Jorma Tommila, a walking snarl, a granite face, a body more scar than skin, the whites of his eyes — sometimes mad, sometimes messianic — shining even brighter when encased in a face caked in blood and mud. He gives us one hell of a time.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 28, 2023
• Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi; Aksel Hennie as SS Obersturmführer Bruno Helldorf; Jack Doolan as Wolf; Onni Tommila as Schütze; Mimosa Willamo as Aino

Home Release Date

• May 16, 2023
• Jalmari Helander

Distributor

Movie review.

He was once a man of war. His body is covered in scars to prove that he fought bravely for his country of Finland. But then something broke inside him. And now? Well, now he has removed himself from combat.

That war still rages. It’s the last days of World War II, and the Allies are slowly pushing the Nazis out of Finland, leaving a wide stretch of scorched earth behind them. But Aatami Korpi is no longer a part of that battle. He is simply a man mining for gold: far from civilization, far from people, far from war.

Then, however, the unexpected happens: He finds what he’s been looking for. Aatami discovers a vein of the precious metal that’s as long as he is tall. And suddenly the slightly crazy and thoroughly filth-covered man is very wealthy. All he has to do is cart his treasure back to what’s left of the world, and he will have more money than he could have ever dreamed.

There is but one problem.

While riding his heavily burdened horse back toward the nearest city, Aatami crosses paths with a small troop of Nazi soldiers heading the opposite direction. It didn’t have to be a problem. The weary soldiers could have kept going. They could have ignored a shaggy, dirty, older man on a swayback horse. But they didn’t. They decided to stop him, to drive him to his knees and steal whatever he might have.

There is a Finnish word, sisu , that cannot be easily translated into English. But it means, roughly, a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination that manifests itself when all hope is lost.

When the sneering, violent Nazis jammed a gun barrel into the back of an old man’s neck, little did they realize they were giving him exactly what he needed. While crushing him down they brought back all the hatred and all the rage that once flooded his very being. They spurred his muscle memory for killing.

Those foul Nazis unleashed … sisu!

Positive Elements

You could say that Aatami’s fight against the German soldiers is a good thing. The soldiers are brutal men. And they are transporting some six Finnish women whom they had kidnapped and repeatedly raped. Aatami eventually sets those women free and gives them the means to claim revenge. But Aatami’s “righteous” actions are also very, very bloody ones.

Spiritual Elements

Sexual content.

Aatami stands naked in a stream to wash his grime-covered body. We see him fully from the rear, his unclothed body covered in scars. Later, we see a group of tattered women huddled in a German truck and find out that the soldiers have kept the kidnapped women to use as sexual slaves.

Violent Content

We don’t see any of the suggested and (apparently) repeated rapes of the women mentioned above. But we do see a shirtless soldier climbing out of the truck after being with them. A different soldier sneeringly spreads one of the women’s legs, before being interrupted.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We find out that Aatami was no ordinary soldier. He was a decorated commander who snapped mentally when Russian soldiers murdered his wife. He then became a “ruthless, one-man death squad” that the Finnish army allowed to do pretty much whatever he desired. He wandered the battle area alone, butchering enemy combatants as he went.

And that’s exactly what happens again after the Germans beat him and drive him to his knees. We see Aatami kill Nazis in scores of brutal ways: He drives a large blade through a soldier’s temple; he repeatedly stabs foes in the torso and neck; he hits a soldier in the head with a landmine (completely obliterating him in slow motion).

Soldiers step on landmines and get blown to chunks (body parts, again, flying in slow motion). We see corpses that have been crisped and seared from fiery explosions, as well as dead soldiers who were shot in the face and forehead. Men underwater have their throats stabbed and the air sucked out of their bubbling, slashed-open necks. Several men get run over by tank treads that leave them crushed to pulp. And, of course, soldiers are riddled with bullets as well as beaten with heavy objects, with blood-gushing results.

Aatami was nicknamed “The Immortal” during his active duty in the military, and we see why: He will not stop or give up, no matter the agony. We see him shot and digging bullets out of his own flesh with the point of a knife. He stiches together gaping, gory wounds with a twisted sliver of metal and some wire. He’s hung by the neck, set on fire, battered about the face with a large metal buckle, hit by the force of a thrown grenade and slashed with a blade. His horse also steps on a landmine—blowing the animal into a bloody mist of bones and guts. Not only does blood continually seep from Aatami’s wounds, but there are large slashes on his face (some wounds he stanches by packing them with dirt).

Soldiers use high-caliber automatic weapons and cannon shells to mow others down and rip up vehicles. A man is strapped to a bomb that falls to the ground and explodes upon impact. Aatami is the sole living passenger in a cargo plane that crashes nose-first into the ground. Etc.

Crude or Profane Language

There is very little dialogue here. But what little we hear is littered with crudities that include more than a dozen f-words and multiple uses of “h—,” “a–” and “d–n.” There’s one exclamation of “son of a b–ch!”

Drug and Alcohol Content

The Germans have a “crate full of booze” that we see at least one soldier drinking from.

Other Negative Elements

One guy urinates as the camera watches him (from the waist up).

We live in a world filled with various shades of gray. And our movies tend to reflect those elusive perspectives about what’s good or evil, what’s right or wrong.

SISU isn’t that kind of film.

Created by a Finnish writer/director on a tiny budget (compared to most American productions, anyway) SISU doesn’t have even the slightest shade of nuance. It knows exactly where it wants to draw the line, where to plant its flag.

You could say this movie is Tarantino-like, or a tale that’s Rambo -ish, but neither of those comparisons fully work for this bit of modern grindhouse fiction.

The dialogue here is pruned back to its crudest nubbins. (The one-man death-squad protagonist, for example, has exactly one sentence to deliver.) The movie’s kill-all-the-tormentors storyline is indefatigably unwavering. It’s carnival of carnage, ripped open flesh and torment is brazenly unapologetic. And it’s all wrapped up in a polished, subtext-free package.

SISU simply aspires to be the raw and raucous entertainment choice for any group of rowdy moviegoers that wants to witness clearly defined bad guys being bloodily blotted out.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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10 Best Action Movies Since John Wick

John Wick set the standard for action films when it was released in 2014, but since then, there have been worthy contenders to its crown.

Action movies are some of the best, most entertaining pieces of cinema in the film industry, delivering a steady stream of high-octane violence to audiences. In 2014, the genre was forever changed when Keanu Reeves debuted as the titular lead of John Wick , casting him as a former Mafia assassin on a revenge mission against the man who killed his dog. Known for its stylish cinematography, brilliant fight choreography, likable hero and great characters, John Wick raised the bar for what constitutes a good action movie.

Since the release of John Wick , major film studios have produced intense action movies more often than ever before, leaving behind the generic shoot-em-up flicks of the past and adopting a more contemporary approach to filmmaking. The genre has since gained more depth, often tinged with the likes of comedy, horror, war and other complimentary genres. Ranging from World War II tales of vengeance to suburban dads waging war on the Mafia, the action genre has been ramped up in the last decade, and it has John Wick to thank for it.

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10 sisu is a world war ii action epic.

Sisu takes place during the Second World War and follows a former commando turned gold prospector, Aatami. After finding a small fortune, he begins the trek to the city to cash in on his gold. However, along the way, he crosses paths with a small German convoy. When some of the soldiers attempt to kill him and take his wealth, the Finnish native turns the tables, killing some of his attackers and fleeing into the wilderness.

Sisu follows Aatami as he evades and fights his Nazi enemy in an epic one-man war that spans across the Finnish landscape. As the former commando's journey turns into a mission of revenge, he sets about ridding his country of the Nazis, saving a group of captured women along the way. The film took the one-man army trope to the most extreme point imaginable, showing Aatami to be practically indestructible as he survives the seemingly impossible, kept alive by his grit and need for vengeance.

*Availability in US

Not available

9 The Hunt Is Blumhouse's Most Controversial Movie

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The Hunt tells the story of a small group of American conservatives who wake up in a field. After being attacked and hunted for sport, they realize they're being pursued by wealthy liberal elites, part of a conspiracy theory known as "ManorGate." The film focuses on Crystal May Creasy, a resourceful war veteran who outsmarts and out-shoots her hunters. As both groups see their numbers cut down, Crystal gets closer to taking down the group's leader, Athena Stone.

The Hunt is a fun blend of action, satire and horror, with Crystal May Creasy being the best contender for the status of "the female John Wick" since Keanu Reeves' character made his debut. As she turns the table on her captors, the Mississippi native cuts loose, intimating that she suffers from PTSD. In the grand finale, she has one of the decade's most entertaining and engaging fight sequences , leaving the audience to wonder if she can best her well-trained opponent.

Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they've been chosen - for a very specific purpose - The Hunt.

8 Nobody Follows a Retired Assassin Who Takes on the Russian Mob

Nobody begins when a seemingly normal suburban family man, Hutch Mansell, allows two burglars to steal from his home, leaving him with a sense of humiliation after his family unfairly blames him. When he steps out one night and tracks down the criminals to recover stolen items, he crosses paths with the younger brother of a local Russian mobster and his friends on the bus home. When they harass the passengers, Hutch takes the group on in a fight, leaving them all seriously injured. When the mobster learns of the attack, he sets out to kill Hutch, attacking his home, triggering an all-out war between the two.

Nobody is one of the more obvious John Wick copycats, borrowing its idea of a relatable motivation, with Hutch setting out to protect his family similar to how Wick avenges his dog. The two films boast Russian mobsters as their antagonists and utilize many of the same storytelling tropes, making Nobody mandatory viewing for fans of Reeves' franchise.

A docile family man slowly reveals his true character after his house gets burgled by two petty thieves, which, coincidentally, leads him into a bloody war with a Russian crime boss.

7 Shaft Unites Three Generations of Actors

Continuing the classic Blaxploitation action franchise into the modern day, 2019's Shaft focuses on JJ Shaft — son of Samuel L. Jackson's character, John Shaft Jr. The film follows JJ as he investigates the shady death of his childhood best friend, a war veteran who seemingly overdosed on heroin. When his case lands a target on his own back, the young FBI agent turns to his father, Harlem's foremost private detective.

Shaft sees three generations of the family of investigators come together to blow the lid off a drug operation, as JJ seeks to avenge the murder of his friend. With callbacks to the original franchise, the inclusion of Richard Roundtree in his original role and plenty of great action, this Netflix original is worth a watch for fans of action and detective movies alike.

6 Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Pits Ethan Hunt Against AI

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After defeating Solomon Lane's Syndicate in Mission: Impossible — Fallout , Tom Cruise reprised his role as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One . The film follows Hunt and his IMF team as they're charged with recovering the key to a Russian submarine's sonar chamber, where the source code of a malevolent AI program, the Entity, is stored.

Hunted by special forces and up against an enemy from his past, Ethan Hunt and his team use their expertise to obtain the key, culminating in a high-speed heist aboard the Orient Express. Although the Mission: Impossible franchise was a hit years before John Wick , the former's latest films have benefitted from audiences' renewed interest in action films, as evidenced by Dead Reckoning Part One 's impressive box office performance.

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5 the suicide squad gives task force x a great adventure.

The Suicide Squad follows a newly formed group of villains sent by Amanda Waller to the small island of Corto Maltese, a dictatorship in the Caribbean. After the first team is defeated, leaving everyone but Harley Quinn and Rick Flag dead, Bloodsport leads a second team into the island's interior, where they rescue Flag and head to the capital.

The Suicide Squad signaled a change in the DCEU, away from the gritty darkness of Zack Snyder's style towards James Gunn's signature comedy action style. After the antiheroes realize they've been sent to an island that houses the giant alien, Starro the Conqueror, they're forced to disobey orders to fight the monster and save the world.

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Supervillains Harley Quinn, Bloodsport, Peacemaker, and a collection of nutty cons at Belle Reve prison join the super-secret, super-shady Task Force X as they are dropped off at the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese.

4 The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Is Action-Adventure at Its Best

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare tells the true story of an elite unit within British intelligence during World War II assembled to engage in unconventional, covert tactics to help win the war. With the permission of Churchill himself, a British Army officer forms an off-the-books team to sabotage German and Italian war efforts, with U-Boats being a key target of theirs. With an eccentric batch of heroic operatives assembled, they set off for enemy territory on their mission.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is basically a who's who of action heroes of the 2020s, combining the talents of Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson into a single dynamic duo. The film's backstory is as fascinating as the action sequences themselves, as the real unit that serves as the film's inspiration housed Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, as well as several people who helped inspire his characters. For audiences who want a look at a secretive turning point in the Second World War, this war-action romp deserves a watch.

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Kingsman: The Secret Service tells the story of a young London man, Eggsy Unwin, who follows in his dead father's footsteps by joining the titular spy agency. Despite being a hardened street youth, Eggsy is a man with a sense of honor, loyalty and courage, something that allows him to overcome his class difference with the team. He aids the service in their battle against Valentine, a Malthusian billionaire plotting the death of every human being outside a small, hand-picked population of elites.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a great spin on Bond movies and spy thrillers, taking every element of the genre to extremes as Eggsy takes on Valentine. The film is a good story of overcoming class boundaries, while also working as a great comedy with consistently over-the-top action sequences that did the original Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons comic book.

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2 Mad Max: Fury Road Is Endlessly Rewatchable

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Mad Max: Fury Road takes place in a future where Australia has been reduced to a desert wasteland by an apocalyptic event. Viewers are reintroduced to Max Rocketansky, the heroic drifter of the classic franchise, when he is taken captive by raiders under the control of the warlord, Immortan Joe. When one of Joe's lieutenants, Furiosa, flees with his brides on his war rig, he cobbles together a war party to hunt them down, with Max taken along as a blood bank. When the fleet of vehicles gets caught up in a sandstorm, Joe's force is left in disarray, and Max escapes and joins Furiosa's journey.

Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most rewatchable films in modern cinema, and has a unique style of cinematography, character designs and editing. The film became one of the few reboots to handily surpass the original, even eclipsing the status of Road Warrior as the best Mad Max movie. The non-stop plot and mastery over the post-apocalypse genre led to one of the best action films of the 21st century.

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1 Extraction II Is Basically a Call of Duty Movie

Extraction II picks up on the story of Tyler Rake following his chaotic mission in India. The sequel follows the mercenary as he is tasked with rescuing his ex-wife's sister from a prison, where she is being held by her criminal husband to prevent her from leaving. Starting with his arrival at the prison, everything quickly goes wrong as Tyler and the family are thrust into the midst of a riot.

Extraction II feels like a live-action Call of Duty movie, showing Tyler Rake at his best, with brilliant fight choreography and special effects as he fights his way through enemy forces. The film rivals the first for its high-octane, fast-paced action, matching the seemingly impossible odds for the soldier of fortune to overcome.

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Best Starz Movies to Watch Now (May 2024)

By Mofeeza Masood

Here’s a look at some of the best Starz movies you can stream right now, including some that were new to the platform in May 2024 . This list is subjective, but includes a variety of genres to suit different tastes, and features some titles that have been generating buzz.

What are the best Starz movies to watch in May 2024?

Craving a movie night but overwhelmed by Starz’s library? Look no further! May 2024 saw a refresh of their offerings, adding a exciting mix of critically-acclaimed features and hidden gems. Whether you’re a sci-fi buff, a fan of mind-bending thrillers, or seeking a good dose of action, this list highlights some of the best Starz movies you can stream right now.

The Equalizer

The Equalizer centers around Robert McCall. By day, he works a mundane job at a local hardware store. Robert is a former CIA operative with a unique set of skills. Haunted by his past actions, he has vowed to live a quiet life. However, when he encounters a young woman named Alina trapped in a dangerous world of prostitution, his moral compass forces him to break his vow. The Equalizer is a story of redemption, showcasing the power of one person to make a difference and the struggle to reconcile a violent past with a desire for a peaceful future.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes us on a journey through the fractured memories of Joel Barish. Devastated after his girlfriend Clementine undergoes a procedure to erase him from her mind, Joel impulsively decides to do the same. As technicians go into his subconscious, the film unfolds through a non-linear exploration of their relationship. We witness the highs and lows of their love, the initial spark, the fights, the tender moments. However, as Joel witnesses these memories fade, a horrifying realization dawns – he still loves Clementine. In a desperate race against time, Joel tries to save the fragments of their love story before they disappear completely, forcing him to confront the complexities of memory, love, and the permanence of the human heart.

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Jodorowsky’s Dune is a documentary about the fascinating (and ultimately failed) attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic to life. Alejandro Jodorowsky, a director known for his wildly surreal films, envisioned a sprawling, psychedelic adaptation. For two years, he assembled a team of talented artists to create a visually groundbreaking experience. While the project never secured funding and fell apart, Jodorowsky’s passion and the team’s visionary concepts left a lasting impact. Many of these artists went on to shape modern sci-fi cinema with films like Alien, Blade Runner, Star Wars, and Total Recall. The documentary explores Jodorowsky’s ambitious vision and the lasting legacy of this “unmade masterpiece,” even though audiences never got to see his interpretation of Dune on the big screen.

John Wick Chapter 4

John Wick Chapter 4 picks up with the legendary assassin still excommunicado by the shadowy international assassins’ guild, the High Table. A hefty bounty hangs over his head, making him a target for every killer in the world. A way to break free from the High Table’s grip leads Wick on a global odyssey, forcing him to confront new enemies. John Wick Chapter 4 is praised for its breathtaking action sequences, world-building that expands the mythology of the assassins’ underworld, and Keanu Reeves’ continued commitment to the iconic role. While some may debate its place among the absolute best films, it’s a thrilling addition to the John Wick franchise, offering a fresh chapter in the relentless fight for Wick’s freedom.

Kingdom of Heaven

Kingdom of Heaven follows Balian, a simple blacksmith haunted by tragedy. When his wife dies, he sets off for Jerusalem. There, Balian inherits his father’s noble title and is drawn into the complex political landscape of the city. As tensions rise and war erupts, Balian’s skills as a blacksmith become crucial in defending Jerusalem. Kingdom of Heaven is praised for its epic visuals, grand battle sequences, and Ridley Scott’s masterful direction. However, opinions are divided on historical accuracy (the Director’s Cut is said to be a better representation of the story). Despite this, the film’s exploration of faith, tolerance, and the brutality of war continues to resonate with viewers, making it a captivating historical drama.

Life (2017)

Life (2017) throws a crew of international astronauts on the International Space Station into chaos. They receive a sample from Mars containing what appears to be single-celled life. Excited by the potential discovery, the crew cultivates the organism, naming it Calvin. However, Calvin rapidly grows and exhibits surprising intelligence. Soon, the seemingly harmless lifeform becomes a deadly threat, forcing the crew to fight for survival in the confined quarters of the space station. Life is praised for its suspenseful story, claustrophobic atmosphere, and the performances of its cast. Life’s focus on the rapid evolution and intelligence of the alien organism keeps the story fresh and thrilling. It raises questions about the dangers of tampering with unknown lifeforms and the human capacity for both wonder and fear when faced with the unknown.

Sisu drops us into the snowy wilderness of Lapland during World War II. A lone prospector, Aatami Korpi, is on a quest to strike gold. His solitary life is shattered when he encounters a Nazi patrol guarding a hidden stash of riches. A brutal fight ensues, and Aatami escapes with a single gold bar. The Nazis, desperate to reclaim their loot, chase Aatami across the landscape. Aided by his resourcefulness, knowledge of the terrain, and a touch of stubborn Finnish sisu (grit), Aatami outwits and outlasts his pursuers in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Sisu is praised for its visuals showcasing the harsh beauty of Lapland, its thrilling action sequences, and a strong central performance by Jorma Tommila as the wily Aatami.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The film portrays a fictionalized version of the actor, Nick Cage, struggling with a declining career and strained relationships. Desperate for work, Nick accepts a hefty sum to attend the birthday of a wealthy superfan, Javi Gutierrez. However, things take a bizarre turn when Nick discovers Javi might not be who he seems. The CIA enters the picture, enlisting Nick’s help in uncovering Javi’s potentially criminal activities. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a nod to Cage’s career, filled with witty references and homages to his past works. It’s praised for its comedic performances, particularly Nicolas Cage’s self-aware portrayal, the exploration of fame, and aging in Hollywood.

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