Credit: Netflix

Not the sort of film you’d expect to rank on Netflix again, and yet Sisu has managed it. The film is trending on Netflix’s global chart and is now sitting at number four, which, if you ask us, is not bad at all for a film directed by Jalmari Helander.

And no, it’s not a Netflix original in case you were wondering. Sisu first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 before getting a bigger release the year after. Now, you might be thinking, what has brought it back into the spotlight now, right? But when you look at it, it makes sense because this war film is just following the trend. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But it’s true.

You see, the ongoing tension in the world has affected Netflix viewers too, and now every week, there is at least one war drama in the charts. Of course, war dramas used to trend before, too, but they used to be seasonal. Trends show that they have booked a permanent spot in the charts to go with the world’s flow.

Coming to the plot of Sisu, it takes you to 1944 in Lapland, Finland, in a proper remote area with nothing around for miles. We have Aatami Korpi, a former commando, as our lead, who is now keeping to himself as a gold prospector. A quiet life, simple living: fair enough, but then he finds a massive stash of gold, and that’s where the story begins, because now he’s got to move it across this rough stretch of land to a town, and you can probably already guess it’s not going to be that simple.

And sure enough, along the way, he runs into a retreating Nazi unit led by Bruno Helldorf, and the moment they clock the gold, they’re not leaving the “golden” opportunity (quite literally in this case). Obviously, they try to take it, but Korpi’s not having any of it, and that’s when the film turns into a drawn-out fight across the wilderness, where it just keeps escalating, one situation after another.

Jorma Tommila plays Korpi, and what’s interesting here is that he barely speaks, so you are not getting long bits of dialogue explaining things. It’s all in what he does and how he moves, and that tells you everything you need to know about him. On the other hand, we have Aksel Hennie, as Helldorf is right there pushing back the whole time. You’ve also got Jack Doolan, Mimosa Willamo and Onni Tommila around the edges, but the main focus is on the previous two blokes.

And the way the film is put together, it’s all about survival and being chased, but the interesting thing here is to watch Korpi deal with everything coming his way, and that doesn’t just include the wild but armed soldiers. Sisu also shows us his past with the help of other characters, where they tell us how he’s not just some random guy who got lucky with gold, but someone with a serious history behind him, which ties into the title, because “Sisu” is this Finnish concept about grit and pushing through no matter what.

That reminds us that Sisu was filmed entirely in Lapland, Finland, so whatever terrain you see in the film is very, very real. The film received a decent response when it first came out, and now it’s on Netflix; viewers are rediscovering it, which goes to show that sometimes a film just needs the right moment to be rediscovered again.