What happens when you take a character similar to John Wick, set him in the ending days of World War II, and give him even less dialogue? You get a Finnish film called Sisu.

Sisu is a Finnish word that cannot be fully translated, but it can be roughly translated into English as “strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity.”

Aatami (Jorma Tommila) was a former soldier who had left the military and began prospecting for gold in the Lapland wilderness. When he struck the motherload, he began to travel to the city to cash in the nuggets. However, he crossed paths with a troop of Nazis who was being forced to leave and were scorching the land on their way out.

Finding out that Aatami had gold, the Nazi troops decided to pursue him, not knowing the legend that this man was.

Jorma Tommila, who was nearly silent when comes to dialogue, gave an amazing performance with his facial expressions and his body language. He was a great protagonist that was easy to cheer for even though he seemed to be more powerful of a character than any super hero.

This movie was remarkably brutal and gory. Some of the kills from Aatami were painful and had me gasping. There were shocks that I just was not ready for as they happened. This absolutely reminded me of the John Wick series as Keanu Reeves had the same type of brutal fight and kill scenes as this was. However, the character of Aatami was injured and survived so many situations that should have killed him. There had to be some suspension of disbelief to not roll your eyes. The film does pull off most of the weird situations that did not pull me out of the film.

Violent and gory, Sisu was a lot of fun and you can never go wrong with killing some World War II Nazis. Aatami is treated like a myth and he pulls that off.

4 stars