Sisu is a Finnish neo-Western set in Lapland (Northern Finland) during the Lapland War - the war that pitted Germans and Finns against each other after having been compatriots for three years.
The film itself blends the silent protagonist of Spaghetti Westerns like the Dollar Trilogy with a more John Wick/Tarantino-esque style of violence and action, while adding superhero elements for... fun... I guess.
The result is a movie that is inherently silly and incredibly stupid.
A movie that does not care at all about realism. How bullets, grenades, mines, military tactics or anything else really works.
It does not care about Finnish history and ends up creating a revisionist movie that paints the Germans in Finland as worse than they were - which is something I did not expect I would ever have to say or write.
But even if you are ok with all of that being nonsensical, the movie has so many more problems with its story. The movie is nothing but one big plothole. It really doesn't understand how to get the basics right.
Except for one thing.
And that is the violence.
I may personally really dislike this movie, but I can see why it has its audience.
It is very violent. Grotesquely violent even. Visceral.
It has some very good effects and is honestly just quite pleasing to the eyes. If you can suspend your disbelief, and I REALLY mean that in the broadest, most extreme sense of the term, then you can probably enjoy the movie.
There is a reason why the film has been reviewed and accepted as "Sisu, an entertaining movie about killing Nazis", "Sisu is a movie for those who just want to see some Nazis die" and "Sisu is an action movie that does not take itself too seriously".
It is perfectly fine that so many people enjoyed it, but I didn't and that is why I am bringing you this critique of the movie.
Contents:
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04:22 - How Grenades (Don't) work
04:59 - The Tank and Gun Problem
06:47 - Fire
07:27 - Convoy
09:25 - Historical Perspective and Revisionism
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15:15 - Plot issues - spoiler heavy
15:38 - Setup and Pay-off + Superhero + Stupid Germans
18:42 - Inept hangmen + man don't bleed out
20:17 - Shoot!
21:20 - Line of sight + geographically confused (+ shoot!)
25:10 - Helsinki on fire
25:30 - The Soviet Plane (Just HOW?)
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Music used in outro: Odyssey by jiglr
It is stock music and should therefore not compromise any copyright laws.
You can find it here: www.free-stock-music.com/jigl...
Clips used (in order) and sources:
Sisu, 2022, © Stage 6 Films
Immersive Engineering, "How Stick Hand Grenade Works ? | (ANIMATION) | Detailed explaination", 29.05.2021.
• How Stick Hand Grenade...
Oula Seitsonen, Vesa-Pekka Herva, Kerkko Nordqvist, Anu Herva & Sanna Seitsonen, "A military camp in the middle of nowhere: mobilities, dislocation and the archaeology of a Second World War German military base in Finnish Lapland", Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 12:1 2017, 3-28
Oula Seitsonen & Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, "‘Where the F… is Vuotso?’: heritage of Second World War forced movement and destruction in a Sámi reindeer herding community in Finnish Lapland", International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017
Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, (Chippenham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
Oula Seitsonen and Vesa-Pekka Herva, "Forgotten in the Wilderness: WWII German PoW Camps in Finnish Lapland", 2011 University of Oulu
Vesa-Pekka Herva , "Haunting Heritage in an Enchanted Land: Magic, Materiality and Second World War German Material Heritage in Finnish Lapland", Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, February 2014 1(2):297-321
Minna T. Turunen, Sirpa Rasmus, Asta Kietäväinen and Nicole Giguère, "The Importance of Reindeer in Northern Finland during World War II (1939 - 45) and the Post-War Reconstruction", Arctic , Vol. 71, No. 2 (JUNE 2018), pp. 167-182
Nikola Budanovic, "The Lapland War: A Fight For Finland To Leave The War", War History Online, Aug 31, 2017, www.warhistoryonline.com/worl...
The clips used in this video fall under fair use of 17 U.S. Code § 107 and are brief and edited, specifically for the purpose of criticism and review. Such use is protected under the fair use doctrine.
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