Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad
“Revenge is a valuable passion, and the only sure pillar on which justice rests,” said AE Housman. Rather than crying out for bloodshed, he was merely encouraging his publisher, Grant Richards, to pursue another publishing house, Constable, which had reprinted a poem from A Shropshire Lad without permission. But the principle is absolute.
This may not be the motto of our more progressive jurists, or the attitude favoured by many New Statesman readers, but revenge is one of the great human motives and a vital genre in the movies: Kill Bill: Vol 1, Kill Bill: Vol 2, Oldboy, Taken, Commando, Gladiator, Mad Max, John Wick, even The Godfather – the list is long and inspiring. These films fulfil a need. One of the things people most want to see in the cinema is baddies getting their just desserts, as bloodily as possible.
The first Sisu film premiered in 2022. A blockbuster in Finland, it was written and directed by Jalmari Helander. His previous films include Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010), a whacky comedy-horror featuring a sinister Santa Claus with an army of zombie-like elves, and Big Game (2014), in which the US president’s plane is brought down by terrorists over Finnish wilderness.
Set in 1944, during the Lapland War between Finland and Nazi Germany, Sisu is the story of a taciturn, incredibly tough, old, gold prospector, Aatami Korpi. A former commando, he discovers a rich seam of nuggets in the wilderness, but on his trek to cash them in he is intercepted by a large Waffen-SS platoon, led by Bruno Helldorf, a psychotic Obersturmführer. These reprehensibles are heavily armed and have a tank, while all Aatami has is his knife and a pick-axe. But, despite being gruesomely injured, he proceeds to slaughter them all in gory ways, having been antagonised by their unkind treatment of his fluffy white Bedlington Terrier. Only when Aatami gets to the bank does he utter his first words: “Bills, big ones please. Won’t be so damn heavy to carry.” Clint Eastwood was a chatterbox in comparison.
Aatami, marvellously wrinkled and leathery, is played by Jorma Tommila, who was 63 in the first film and is, incidently, married to Helander’s sister. (As it happens, their son, Onni Tommila, has played the lead in Uncle Jalmari’s other films.) But if this makes it family am-dram, it’s never quite been done like this before.
Sisu has justly acquired quite a following, so it comes as little surprise that there is a second instalment. Sisu is briskly explained as a Finnish word that doesn’t have a direct English equivalent but can be loosely translated to mean unimaginable determination against overwhelming odds. It’s 1946 and this time the enemies are Russians. Finland has a complicated history of fighting both the Soviet Union (defensively) and the Nazis (offensively) during the Second World War.
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Aatami sets off into Soviet-occupied Karelia, driving a rugged truck, trusty canine by his side, to recover the timbers of his family home, where his wife and two little boys were slaughtered during the war. Tasked with taking down this legendary killer of Red Army soldiers is one Dragunov (Stephen Lang, Colonel Miles Quaritch in Avatar), himself a fearsome brute.
At first, Aatami doesn’t know that Dragunov murdered his family. But when the beast gloatingly informs him that he chopped them all into pieces with an iron shovel and fed them to stray dogs, Aatami really takes against him.
The narrative gambit here is that, over and over again, Aatami repeatedly fights back despite facing impossible odds and being seriously injured. That’s to say, the film is just as masochistic as it is sadistic: the beatings and torture our hero endures puts a new meaning to being beaten to a bloody pulp. Aatami becomes nothing less than a graphic ecce homo before surging into vengeance again.
Sisu: Road to Revenge makes almost Terrence Malick-like use of enormous steppe landscapes, distant horizons and flaming skies, which are effective contrasts against the close-up action shots, the camera charging towards the violence, rather than passively observing. Tommila makes for a fantastic action hero – his performance is contained, grubby and stubbly. Compared to the first film, the scenarios here are a bit inflated and over-mechanised, and there are some rather dubious plot holes. But if it’s a violent cartoon you fancy, as we all do from time to time, you won’t be disappointed. The only sure pillar, remember.
“Sisu: Road to Revenge” is in cinemas now
[Further reading: Cameron Crowe’s endless adolescence]
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