Finnish Action Film ‘Sisu’ Gobsmacks Panic Fest Audience

The phrase “genre film” is often translated as “horror movie”. It’s as if the word substitutions can somehow fool non-horror fans into watching a horror film. While horror may be the most popular and financially successful type of film under the “genre” umbrella, “genre film” refers to all types of films that are outside of the mainstream — science fiction, fantasy, action, westerns, and often foreign versions of these films.

Panic Fest, an annual film festival held in Kansas City, Missouri, embraces all facets of genre film. For many film fanatics, packing up and heading to Telluride or Sundance or Toronto for a week is cost prohibitive. While all those festivals have impressive genre sections (often referred to as their Midnight Movies), they are more likely Bucket List items for film lovers, not realistic annual travel itineraries.

Over the past ten years or so, a group of regional genre film festivals have sprung up across the country to scratch that festival itch for film fans who don’t live in, or near, large markets like New York City and Los Angeles. From The Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans and the Chattanooga Film Festival in Tennessee to Panic Fest in Kansas City, fans of genre films now have destination vacation spots that are friendlier to their bank accounts with reasonable lodging options and smaller market prices for festival passes and individual tickets.

Sisu, a Finnish action film set during the final days of World War II that headlined Panic Fest 2023, is the best ninety minutes of genre filmmaking I’ve seen this year. Although there are only four months in the cinematic books, this lean, mean, gonzo spectacle will be a tough act to follow. The super-stylized John Wick 4 is the Lawrence of Arabia of action films with its epic (bloated?) runtime and stunning cinematography. Sisu, on the other hand, has no fat on the bone. It stakes its claim to action perfection by being ninety minutes of pure momentum. (Even the title of the film is a Finnish word that roughly translates into “relentlessness”.)

As the film opens, it’s 1944, and a Finnish Man with No Name is panning for gold in Lapland with his dog and his horse. He appears to be a soldier returning home from the war who hopes to find a fortune on which to build his post-war life. (Our protagonist’s true identity is revealed later in the film and won’t be spoiled here.) The gorgeous countryside is littered with huge holes in the ground, dug by the Finnish Man with No Name as he looks for the vein of gold that will change his life.

If you’ve seen the trailer, or if you’ve ever seen an action movie before, you know our protagonist hits his mother lode during the first few minutes of the film, stuffs his saddle bags full of gold … and comes across a Nazi convoy as he’s taking his loot to town. What ensues is a brutal battle of the fittest that is less a war film and more a crazed Spaghetti Western with better weaponry. The film effortlessly flows from one amazing action set piece to the next. (If you think you’ve seen compelling uses of a minefield, you ain’t seen nothing yet.)

Sisu owes narrative debts to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and the bloodbath period films of Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.) But, as with all great genre films, Sisu merely channels its influences rather than stealing from them. You know Sisu is truly original when all these comparisons don’t entirely capture the singular magic of this Finnish film.

Where the John Wick films are elegant in their choreography and steeped in genteel concepts of violence like duels with pistols at dawn, Sisu is gritty and brutal like a rabbit punch to the kidney. Writer-director Jalmari Helander proves that his Christmas horror classic, the 2010 film Rare Exports, was no fluke. He toggles from 21st century horror to World War II action with nary a blink. It seems criminal that he only made one feature film between these two genuine genre bangers.

If there’s any justice in Hollywood, Sisu should have film production companies lining up with their checkbooks to bankroll Helander’s next project. That’d be a win for the filmmaker and for genre fans everywhere.