AGMR – Sisu – The ‘They Had It Coming’ edition 3/5 –

  I’m not giving anything away here because all of that was available from the trailer, which I saw only once. But that was enough to get me onboard. And to be honest, this movie on the whole was more or less an extension of the trailer. But I was okay with that the way that we were all totally cool with seeing John Wick kick @$$ several times per movie – x 3 movies. And if we loved seeing John Wick wade through waves of criminal underworld-types in a bloody frenzy, how much MORE do we love watching a grizzled, down-trodden everydude annihilate the bad guys from WWII in awesomely graphic ways? That’s rhetorical. We love it infinity. It was spectacular.

   The action sequences speak for themselves (if screams of pain and terror qualify as speaking, that is). The rest of the movie kind of rode their coattails. There was only the slightest of character development for anyone. Bad guys who were devoid of even a whisper of humanity…check. Captives who had abandoned hope…check. The hero, a lonely pick-slinger who is only doing what he must…check. For the most part, this was a cast of unknowns who did everything that was asked of them (which wasn’t a whole lot) to fantastic degree. In fact, the only face I recognized was the German leader Bruno, played by Aksel Hennie, who is most famous for setting off a bomb in space (‘a terrible, terrible idea’) in ‘The Martian’.

   I would like to give a special nod-of the head to the faithful unnamed dog-of-unknown-breed, whose performance had the most emotional range and did its best to portray a one-eyed dog (of course) but only partially succeeding. Bravo, dog-of-unknown-breed. We cheerily accept the minimum level of ‘awww’ for this picture, thanks to you. Well done.

   Could Sisu have been a truly great movie if there had been more character maturation? Certainly. Regardless, we walked in the theater already emotionally invested in seeing stereotypical evil dudes get dismembered. Any character depth would have been purely a bonus. We got what we wanted, what we expected. Nay, demanded. It was enough. Sisu would have been a solid 4 of 5 except that some of the action sequences were over-the-top, even for this genre. Still, I’m giving Sisu a 3 out of 5 on the sheer merit that some shade of humanity ended up winning the day. Well worth your $$ plus corn. Enjoy!

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And for an old-school digital time-killer, visit the official movie site and play the SISU SWEEPER game! https://www.lionsgate.com/movies/sisu