I winced and then was amused more than once as watching Jalmari Helander’s new film “Sisu”, an extremely violent but preposterously entertaining World War II film which really goes over the top along with its silent but striking hero. As stoic, lethal, and unstoppable as John Wick and John Rambo, this dude is quite determined to eliminate all those bad guys on his way for retrieving what is rightfully his, and you will appreciate how deftly the movie balances itself between sheer intensity and a sly sense of deadpan humor.

The movie is set in the Lapland area of Finland in late 1944. The country has been ravaged by the war by Russia and Nazi Germany, but that does not seem to worry its hero that much. At the beginning of the story, he is silently and steadily prospecting for gold alone at some remote spot, and he eventually succeeds in finding large chunks of gold ore in the ground. All he has to do now is taking his gold to Helsinki, though the journey to the city will be quite risky due to those Nazi soldiers in the area.

Our hero tries as much as possible for not throwing any attention, but, alas, things do not go that well for him when he subsequently happens to come across a bunch of Nazi soldiers on the road. They simply let him pass by at first, but they did that on purpose, and our hero soon finds himself pursued by them after the following incident between him and several other Nazi soldiers. After eventually pushed into what is virtually a deathtrap, he gets his gold snatched by those Nazi soldiers, and that certainly makes him quite angry to say the least.

Right from their first clash with our hero, his opponents, led by a SS officer who is certainly delighted to get an opportunity to get out of the war via our hero’s gold, belatedly come to realize that our hero is not just a plain civilian they can easily eliminate. He soon begins to eliminate his opponents one by one, and it is revealed later that our hero is a notorious former special forces member who became quite vengeful and murderous after his whole family was killed by Russian soldiers.

Although looking rather outmatched in number, our hero surely throws more fear and dread to his opponents and their leader, who is not daunted nonetheless as becoming more willing to eliminate our hero by any means necessary. After all, they have a tank besides guns and knives, and their fearful opponent is not entirely invincible as he gets wounded here and there in his body along the story.

However, our hero shows more of sheer will and determination which may even impress the lead character played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (2007). At one point, he gets himself hanged by his opponents due to one of his main vulnerabilities, but he somehow finds a way for not only fooling his opponents but also saving himself (Is this a spoiler?), and you will be amazed more by how he performs another emergency treatment on his body later.

Meanwhile, the movie also pays some attention to a bunch of local women held by the Nazi soldiers as prisoners to be sexually exploited. One of these women sees what is happening to their captors, and there is a wonderful little moment when she calmly but ominously tells their captors a bit about why they should not have messed with our hero from the beginning. When our hero delivers the chance for revenge to them later in the story, the ladies do not hesitate at all, and that leads to one of major payback moments in the story.

The movie feels all the more outrageous as our hero does more unbelievable things including the one reminiscent of the opening action sequence of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015), but it keeps its attitude absolutely straight even at that point, and Helander and his crew members including cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos did a commendable job of filling the screen with an ample amount of style and mood. The wide landscape shots of the film look surreal at times with the stark barren atmosphere not so far from modern western films, and this aspect is further accentuated by the aggressive score by Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä.

Like the movie, Jorma Tommila, who previously collaborated with Helander in “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale” (2010) and “Big Game” (2014), and several other main cast members play straight to their materials. While Tommila firmly holds the ground with his strong taciturn performance, Aksel Hennie, an engaging Norwegian actor who drew my attention for the first time via his intense performance in Morten Tyldum’s “Headhunters” (2011), and Jack Doolan are effective as the two main villains of the story, and Mimosa Willamo holds her own little place well as a substantial female character in the story.

In conclusion, “Sisu” will amuse and entertain you a lot once you go along with its extreme violence and some deadpan humor behind it, and the result is certainly better than Peter Thorwarth’s recent Netflix film “Blood & Gold” (2023), another recent World War II flick which also kills lots of Nazi soldiers. As I pointed out in my 2.5-star review on “Blood & Gold”, you need much more than killing Nazi soldiers when you make a bloody and violent World War II exploitation flick, and I assure you that “Sisu” surely has more than killing all those Nazi bastards.