Sisu follows Aatami Korpi, a quiet former Finnish soldier who searches for gold in the Lapland wilderness in 1944. German troops led by the cruel SS officer Bruno Helldorf steal his gold and leave him for dead. Aatami survives hanging, gunfire, mines, drowning, and a plane crash while he follows the convoy toward the city. The film uses almost no dialogue and presents the journey as a bloody, exaggerated revenge story with dry humor.
Aatami later frees a group of Finnish women held prisoner by the Germans. Aino leads the women as they take rifles, shoot German soldiers, seize a truck, and drive a captured tank to a Finnish unit. This short subplot gives the women direct power and a shared revenge role, while Aatami remains the main hero and does most of the fighting. The story presents their action as part of the same survival and revenge fantasy, rather than as a speech about modern politics or identity.
Community feedback
Was our 26% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Sisu.
Woke representation / casting
The film gives Aino and five other Finnish women a visible action role beside the male lead. Aino takes charge, and the women use rifles, seize a truck, and drive a captured tank. Those choices make the women more than background prisoners, but the group appears in a short part of the film. The film uses Finnish women in a Finnish war setting, so the casting does not show a race or nationality mismatch.
24%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The few spoken lines discuss gold, survival, war, and Finnish sisu. The film does not use modern identity or activist language.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
The film gives a group of imprisoned Finnish women a short revenge arc. Aino speaks with confidence, takes the lead, and helps the women turn their abuse into armed action. The women shoot German soldiers, drive a truck, and deliver a captured tank and prisoner to Finnish troops. This is a clear empowerment beat, but it stays secondary to Aatami's one-man revenge story.
36%
Western institutional / cultural critique
Not present. The film shows Nazi violence and wartime abuse as part of its 1944 setting. It does not turn those events into a modern attack on patriarchy, capitalism, Christianity, or Western institutions.
0%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. Sisu is an original story about fictional characters. The film does not change an established character, source, or historical person to make an identity point.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
A small number of right-leaning comments objected to the women's revenge scene as women’s power or diversity messaging. Most public discussion praised the film as a non-woke action throwback or focused on its gore and absurd kills. News and review coverage did not report a large anti-woke campaign around the film. The complaints found were fringe and limited.
5%
Creator track record context
Cached creator context gives Helander a score of 1 and gives most producers scores of 0 or 1. The casting director is scored at 14, and one producer has a score of 22 from earlier representation-focused films. The main creative record is still commercial genre work without a clear activist or DEI pattern. The low score reflects background context rather than a strong signal from Sisu.
5%
Production
Movie · 2025
Newly released from prison and marked for death by unrelenting enemies, Nate must now protect his estranged 9-year-old daughter, Polly, at all costs.
Movie · 2024
When his family is murdered, a deaf-mute named Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of…
Movie · 2019
Two policemen, one an old-timer, the other his volatile younger partner, find themselves suspended when a video of their strong-arm tactics becomes the media's cause du jour.
Movie · 2017
John Wick is forced out of retirement by a former associate looking to seize control of a shadowy international assassins’ guild.
Movie · 2024
When a Delta Force special ops mission goes terribly wrong, Air Force drone pilot Reaper has 48 hours to remedy what has devolved into a wild rescue operation.
Movie · 2021
Rescued as a child by the legendary assassin Moody and trained in the family business, Anna is the world’s most skilled contract killer.
Movie · 2023
Robert McCall finds himself at home in Southern Italy but he discovers his friends are under the control of local crime bosses.
Movie · 2018
A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. and the state's most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly…
