Review: Sisu

Is Sisu the best movie of 2023? If what you want from a film is a series of increasingly nasty and brutal execution-style killings of various thoroughly unpleasant Nazis, then let's go with "probably". An extremely satisfying slice of pulp violence, it knows exactly what it's doing and delivers in every scene. As far as films go where the hero uses a mining pick to hook himself onto a plane as it's taking off so he can kill everyone on board, this is at the head of the pack.

It's the dying days of World War II and Finland - which for a while there was fighting alongside the Nazis - has switched sides. Not that it matters to Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), who has retired from war and is now just a gold prospector hoping to strike it lucky. 

Which he does and then some; now he has to get the gold into town and into a bank, and the only thing standing between him and his goal is the retreating German army. They're operating under a scorched earth policy; some of their cannier soldiers - most notably Helldorf (Aksel Hennie) and his sidekick Wolf (Jack Doolan) - have one eye on how they're going to get out of Europe entirely.

When Helldorf an his men encounter Korpi they let him pass: he's an old man with a horse and a dog and not much else, plus there are more soldiers coming along to take care of him. Unfortunately for those other soldiers, Korpi is a killing machine who wipes them out when they discover his gold. Helldorf turns his tank back to investigate, and an extremely bloody chapter of the war is about to begin. 

As much (or more) a spaghetti western as it is a war movie (think Tarantino without the dialogue), this carefully ratchets up the carnage scene by bloody scene. By the time things start to get a little (well, a lot) implausible it all fits seamlessly into the insanely violent world that's been established. 

Killing someone by throwing a land mine at their helmet is only the beginning, and while the violence is the main draw here there's just enough plot and characterisation going on to tell a highly entertaining story where a lot of scumbags get what they deserve.

Korpi survives an implausible amount of damage, but that's what the film is about. "Sisu" is a uniquely Finnish characteristic that means something like "too stubborn to die". And so he proves to be. 

At 90 minutes it gets the job done and then some with a minimum of messing about; the one subplot about the women the Nazis have kidnapped just opens the door for some bonus vengeance.  If Finland wants to be the home of thrilling pulp action, they're off to a rip-roaring start.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is all about power, though only occasionally the kind that scours the Earth black with atomic fire. A relentless, thudding portrait of the man who led the multi-billion dollar (and that's 1940s dollars) project to build the atomic bomb, on one level - and this is a film with no shortage of levels - it's about someone who decides that if the system won't give him the power he desires, he'll go outside it. Which is a problem if you have a head full of atomic secrets and your government never trusted you in the first place.

Skipping across multiple timelines - this is a Christopher Nolan film, after all - much of the meat of the story comes framed by a grey-haired Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) testifying in a shabby little room to a group of men who, it rapidly becomes clear, do not have his best interests at heart. Youthful, frizzy haired Oppenheimer's past studying "the new physics" across Europe is skimmed across; when he settles down in Berkley to teach, the clouds of war are already boiling and his dalliances with Communism are raising eyebrows.

Meanwhile in a black & white 1959, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) is going before a senate committee hearing to confirm him as a member of Eisenhower's cabinet. Post war, he gave Oppenheimer a job at Princeton; now, it gradually becomes clear, the father of the Atomic Bomb has fallen from public favour. Will their past connection cost Strauss a cushy government job? And what exactly was the nature of their connection anyway?

Nolan is good at a lot of things, and juggling plot points to create suspense has been a strong point of his all the way back to Memento. The final hour of this three hour film pulls together a range of well-woven strands to build a solid drama around the fall of an American Prometheus (though Icarus seems almost as appropriate). For a film touted for its stunning visuals and IMAX cinematography, it's surprising how much of this is just men in suits in small rooms; there are other ways for a film to be big, and when it counts this delivers big time.

For one, there's a cast stacked with stars (a repeated pattern is a recognisable name getting one big scene, then a muted callback set years later); for another there's plenty of sweeping desert scenery at Los Alamos - at times it feels like Oppenheimer's trademark hat should have been a cowboy one. Despite many of the scientists being refugees from Europe (and wanting to beat Hitler to the Bomb is shown as their primal motivation), Nolan makes sure to frame this as an American saga, stars and stripes flying high.

The core of this story is the Manhattan Project, though the mechanics and technical challenges are largely kept off-screen. Background reading isn't essential but wouldn't hurt, if only to keep track of the hurricane of scientists swirling around Oppenheimer's eye. We get the drift: the Bomb was a big deal, and on the rare occasions when this film wants to hammer home the point about the awful forces being unleashed - they do have to test the Bomb, even if there's more than zero chance it will ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world - rest assumed the hammer hits hard.

More important here is Oppenheimer himself; it's his name on the poster after all. This is a big budget epic with a recognisable human being at its center, which is to say Oppenheimer is often a smug jerk who turns his back on one wife (Florence Pugh), cheats on another (Emily Blunt), informs on his commie friends to a government he knows contains people who will torture or kill them, is wracked with guilt maybe a little too late, and is shocked to learn that the US military isn't his best friend once he's given them the city-destroying Bomb they wanted.

The film focuses tight on Oppenheimer, and intentionally so. The Atomic Bomb may have changed the world, but this isn't a film about that world; if he didn't see it, or imagine it, then - Strauss's confirmation aside - neither will we. He's a man who could and did inspire others, a leader of personal charm and charisma (how else could he have kept a rabble of top scientists working in the desert for years on a super weapon?), but here much of that is told, not shown. 

When Oppenheimer does speak to a crowd or group, Nolan will often use that moment to show us his thoughts (sex scenes, charred corpses) rather than the effect of his words. Whatever he had in him to inspire such loyalty - beyond the natural attraction of Murphy's always compelling performance - remains a mystery.

What we do see clearly is that the world around him is one of overlapping modes of power, whether the systems of the state, the unity of organised labour, or personal commitment to an individual. Each are in violent dispute with the other, and giving your loyalty to one earns you the lifelong enmity of the rest. It is a world of eternal, brutal conflict; no wonder Oppenheimer came to regret giving it the Bomb.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

Nobody ever watches a Mission:Impossible movie for the story. The series has been legendarily incoherent from the very first installment: a big part of the fun is the surprise reveals - there's always at least one mask-removing twist - as the Impossible Mission Force battles some world-ending threat that involves a mix of computer hacking and old-fashioned physical risk.

Much like the Fast & Furious franchise (which this resembles more than it would like to admit), it had a bumpy run after the first film, taking a few more movies to fully find its feet. The result now is a franchise stripped of everything but the basics. All but gone are the shock betrayals and complicated high-tech heists, replaced by what seems to be the sole remaining selling point: Tom Cruise risking his life doing incredible stunts he probably doesn't need to do.

As is traditional, the plot revolves around various factions trying to obtain an object that will give the owner global dominance - you know, like the plot of the current Indiana Jones movie, only the hi-tech is ultra-modern rather than steeped in antiquity - but this time the object (a key) comes in two parts so double the chase sequences.

All the usual suspects are back: hacker Luther (Ving Rhames), slightly more energetic hacker Benji (Simon Pegg), with pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) possibly being of use to the IMF while ex-MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) continues to be out there going rogue. Even IMF boss Eugene Kitterage (Henry Czerny) returns for the first time since the first film to be somewhat competent yet never quite ahead of our hero Ethan Hunt (Cruise).

For a film where the action sequences are so carefully worked out, the story is a bit of a mess, and not just in the usual "let's keep the audience guessing" fashion. It's your standard globe-trotting between action set pieces (at one point they stop in at a nightclub seemingly awaiting a visit from John Wick) while various evil forces - and some good guys led by Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham, in his usual flustered but competent mode) - join the fray.

This is yet another blockbuster that's either tapped into the zeitgeist or is stitched together out of bits of other recent blockbusters, only more so. Often we know major plot points before any of the characters do, while one major development is that an important gadget breaks for no reason; the standard scene where everyone explains everything to each other takes place while Hunt is off riding a motorcycle elsewhere. Hopefully someone fills him in before part two.

The big bad here is a self-aware computer program known as "the Entity" that is designed to falsify data but is also so good at reading patterns it can predict the future. Every government in the world wants to use it, while letting it roam free will result in an internet where nothing can be trusted (clearly this movie is set in 2016 and the good guys lose).

There's a clear split set up here between the virtual bad guys - Gabriel (Esai Morales), a sinister figure from Ethan's past who's never been mentioned before is the Entity's embodied henchman, with hitwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff) by his side - and the physical IMF force. One works online and has everything under control, the other is clearly winging it and specialises in physical deception and running around a lot. The film doesn't really do anything with this split, but it does add a nice contrast.

Much more importantly, the action scenes - which are the whole point of this relentlessly energetic film - are very good. Setting-wise they're not always that inventive (there's a car chase through the streets of Rome a la the last Fast & Furious film) but they're extremely well crafted whether they're going for blunt force or fluid motion, and they often have enough of a sense of humour to them to work as more than just a pile of increasingly unlikely developments. 

All the really big stunts are in the trailers, but that doesn't lessen their impact here. The final sequence on board the Orient Express (which seems to still be a steam train in the M:I universe) is worth the price of admission alone, an ever-escalating series of nail-biting events where Cruise riding a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting away is only the mid-point.

Also, despite the whole "part one" thing, this actually has a solid, satisfying ending. Ironically enough, this only makes the prospect of the next installment more appealing. Who knew that making a good film was the way to get people interested in your next one?

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones was never supposed to grow old. Created as a homage to the Republic serial heroes of the 1940s, he's the kind of stock pulp hero designed to have adventures, not character. He was out of date the moment he hit the screens, and much like the other remaining pulp heroes - James Bond, and that's about it as far as the box office goes, though it's possible to argue the success of superhero movies is in part because superheroes are largely stock pulp characters - every time they come back they seem a little less suited to the times.

As the self-proclaimed last ever Indiana Jones movie until a combination of deep fake technology and licensing agreements brings Harrison Ford circa 1984 back from the grave permanently, Dial of Destiny has to deal with endings and time passing and all the things pulp heroes are explicitly designed not to have to worry about (does anyone want to watch a movie where Doc Savage gets old?). It can only do so good a job: there's only so much baggage you can add before things start to break down.

The other big issue is that it's a homage to something hardly anyone remembers any more. Even the previous Indy film, 2008's Crystal Skull, felt like it was an imitation of previous films for much of the time. And before that there were only three films, and only two of them were better than pretty good. James Bond has been going for 60 years, but there were over a dozen books to work with even before the movies; what makes a great Indiana Jones movie is pretty much limited to "what they did in Raiders of the Lost Ark".

So going in the bar has been set at "good enough". Worst case, it's a reminder that Indy's days have passed; best case, it's a fond farewell to yet another one of Harrison Ford's iconic characters. Either way, it's had enough money and talent thrown at it - and there's enough examples of what's worked in the past to work from - to ensure that the financial viability of the character for theme parks and other spin-offs is somewhat restored.

On the plus side, Harrison Ford is a charming and charismatic actor (obviously), and while his recent returns to iconic characters have been relatively brief (he was firmly in a supporting role in both Blade Runner 2049 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) here he's the star from start to finish. He starts out digitally de-aged in a WWII-set flashback, but even that is mostly handled well so long as you don't spend the entire sequence thinking about how, now that they have trained the various programs on the real-life Ford, just how much easier it'll be to replicate him in the future.

The film itself is, if you can ignore everything around it, good enough. Set mostly in 1969 and mostly involving various factions (including Indy's god-daughter, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in a very Phoebe Waller-Bridge fashion) fighting to recover an artifact that could change the course of history, it's a mostly fun romp where most of the parts work. 

It's not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that was never going to be an option. Maybe one day someone will make a big exciting thrill ride movie that's based on their love for the Indiana Jones movies while delivering something new. Until then, this is the world we live in, no matter what ancient magic gizmos we uncover.

- Anthony Morris