3 out of 5

Directed by: Jalmari Helander

There are some really great scenes towards the end of Sisu, with its concluding scuffle making good on a kind of cinematic epicness that’s continually promised by the look and feel of the movie.

Prior to that? It’s really, really, really okay.

This is essentially how I felt about writer / director Jalmari Helander’s other big Finnish flick, Rare Exports, which was high concept X-Mas horror that never felt nearly as indulgent as it seemed to portray, just as Sisu’s theoretically violent revenge tale isn’t spectacularly violent or vengeful. But war vet Korpi (Jorma Tommila) makes for a fun-to-watch lead, purposefully landing somewhere between Man With No Name’s stoicism and Rambo’s forward momentum badassness, and Nazis are almost always worthwhile bad guys, and Helander keeps things to a tight 90 minutes with helpful chapter breaks that tell you the scene that’s currently dragging a little bit is about to change.

We get a narrator setup: an indirect definition of the Finnish term ‘Sisu’ – essentially being unwaveringly determined – and are told of a man who tires of war, and specifically the Lapland War in which his country is currently engaged. That’s Korpi. And he’s done with all that, and is now out in the fields, digging and panhandling for gold, trusty steed and dog at his side. He strikes it rich and sets out on horseback for somewhere other than here.

…Until being hassled by some Germans who are on the retreat, led by Bruno (a fantastic Aksel Hennie), who waves Korpi along, until realizing there’s gold in them there bags. The chase is on.

Rather slowly.

This is that disconnect: what follows are presumably supposed to be exciting, bloody, and darkly comedic sequences where Korpi fulfills battlefield rumors that had him called Koschei (“the Immortal”), suffering loss after loss while fighting with and escaping from the Germans. But each interaction (headed by those chapter titles) feels rather barebones, not quite tense, not quite funny, not quite exciting. The editing by Juho Virolainen and framing by Helander and DP Kjell Lagerroos is often working at cross-purposes with this, cutting away from violence such as to make all the grit and grime feel like set dressing instead of earned, and chopping up fisticuffs or the visual pacing such that action and jokes don’t land their beats, too fast or too slow on-screen for proper impact. Tommila grimaces amusingly, and Hennie is a wonderfully droll bastard in the role, and you kind of get a secondary whiff of excitement from all of this, but the more direct effect feels like you’re always waiting for the movie to turn a page and really get going.

To its credit, the 70 or so minutes it takes to get to when that page does turn – the conclusion – go by pretty quickly. But that doesn’t necessarily rewrite those 70 minutes into being anything more than okay.