Movie · 2022 · Action, War, Thriller · 1h 31m · R · FI
Curator score: 3.8/10 (324.6K ratings)
Vengeance is golden.
Overview
When an ex-soldier who discovers gold in the Lapland wilderness tries to take the loot into the city, German soldiers led by a brutal SS officer battle him.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.8/10
IMDb: 6.9/10
Letterboxd: 3.23/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 70
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Jalmari Helander
Production
Subzero Film Entertainment, Good Chaos, Stage 6 Films
Cast
Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan, Mimosa Willamo, Onni Tommila, Tatu Sinisalo, Wilhelm Enckell, Vincent Willestrand, Arttu Kapulainen, Elina Saarela, Ilkka Koivula, Max Ovaska, Joel Hirvonen, Pekka Huotari, Severi Saarinen, Aamu Milonoff, Joonas Brilli, Nicholas Francett, Kevin Francett, Eemeli Franssi
Curator Review
Verdict
A lean, gleefully over-the-top revenge thriller that trades realism for momentum, gore, and a dead-serious comic-book attitude. It’s especially effective if you want a short, hard-charging action movie with a strong visual style and a simple moral engine: Nazis get wrecked.
Best for
action fans who like pulpy, high-concept violence
viewers in the mood for a fast 90-minute crowd-pleaser
people who enjoy revenge stories with a grimly funny edge
fans of stylized war-adjacent genre filmmaking
Skip if
you want grounded WWII drama or historical realism
excessive gore and cartoonish violence turn you off
you need layered character development or complex plotting
you dislike movies built around a single joke or premise
Overview
Sisu is a stripped-down, ferocious genre exercise that knows exactly what it is. It takes a simple setup — a lone prospector, a stash of gold, and a convoy of Nazis — and turns it into a barrage of inventive kills, dry humor, and survival-movie escalation. The film’s appeal is less in narrative surprise than in execution: pace, framing, and a stubbornly absurd sense of invincibility.
Worth noting
Jalmari Helander keeps the movie moving with a brisk runtime and a confident visual style, making the wilderness feel both beautiful and hostile. The violence is outrageous enough to read as dark comedy, but the film never winks so hard that it loses its bite. That balance is what makes it work: it’s shamelessly pulpy, but polished.
Bottom line
If you’re in the right mood, it plays like a midnight movie with a revenge fantasy core. If you want nuance, restraint, or historical texture, this is not that movie. But as a lean action machine with a memorable premise and a strong sense of mischief, it lands.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Bryan Espitia (3★) · 2499 likes
The dog lives and the Nazis die, that’s good enough for me 👍
𝒜𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒹𝒶 𝒦.🏳️🌈 (4★) · 1513 likes
Sisu while not incredibly inventive manages to satisfy the bloodlust all gore hounds crave.
Somewhere between a Tarantino flick and a cartoon, Sisu delivers a completely bonkers experience and calls for the suspension of all disbelief. That aside, the sleek, beautifully shot and incredibly gruesome film by Jalmari Helander manages to fly by at a breakneck pace, while keeping action aficionados thoroughly entertained. The story is simple and the dialogue minimal but it accomplishes what it set out to do.… more
davidehrlich (2.5★) · 1202 likes
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’… more
Justin Decloux (4★) · 1135 likes
I'm a big fan of films where an old silent protagonist kills nazis by stabbing them in the head, blowing them up, and shooting them in the face. SISU is that for 90 minutes.
Joe A (3★) · 890 likes
Campadjective
1. deliberately exaggerated and theatrical in style, typically for humorous effect.
"the movie seems more camp than shocking or gruesome…but it was also a little shocking”
2012 · Drama, Western · 2h 45m · R · Curator 9.4/10 (5M ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Peacock Premium, Starz, Philo, Peacock Premium Plus
A revenge-driven genre mashup that mixes brutality, dark humor, and crowd-pleasing payback.