This was the movie I watched the evening after Beau Is Afraid. It wasn’t purely by choice; in two weeks, there are four unlimited showings at Cineworld. If you go to all four, you get entered into a prize draw. Hypnotic was first; then Beau Is Afraid; and now Sisu.
After the movie I watched the previous night that I didn’t enjoy, this movie was very much a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t an overly complicated, deeply meaningful film. At its heart, it was simply an action movie: a one man kill squad taking out Nazis.
In the initial opening scene, the main character, Jorma, really doesn’t come across as much of a threat. He’s panning for gold with his dog and his horse, and is obviously really happy when he finds some. As is revealed later on in the movie, he really has nothing left to live for, as his whole family is dead. As Aino puts it, ‘He’s not immortal. He simply refuses to die.’
An interesting thing about Jorma’s character was that he was clearly prepared to ignore the Nazis as long as they left him alone. In some ways, that attitude was understandable…and it wasn’t clear that he was immediately aware of the women who’d been taken captive; although they were used to navigate the minefield later, and I’m pretty sure he was aware that they were prisoners.
The Nazis definitely weren’t sympathetic in this movie, but there was one scene where they think they’ve killed Jorma and one of them removes his cap in what seems to be a way of respecting the dead. I thought that was an interesting touch to the movie.
I was really glad to see that the women who were captives were developed and shown to be pretty strong. The only one who really had any speaking parts was Aino, but I had a lot of respect for them by the time they were given the tools to fight back against their captors. There’s a really good scene of them just walking along, which feels very powerful.
I mentioned that Jorma is a one man kill squad and doesn’t seem to die, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune to injury. There were a lot of scenes where I cringed at the wounds he received and, to be honest, I did question just how he was able to carry on walking, let alone fighting, after some of what he went through…cauterising the wounds or not.
Despite the difficulty in suspension of disbelief I noted above, this movie was an easy watch. I probably won’t watch it again, but it was entertaining to watch the first time.
Ink of Blood 