Film Review of the Week

Action

Sisu: Road To Revenge (15)

Review: In 2023, Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander embraced gratuitous gore in his adrenaline-pumping wartime action adventure Sisu, pitting a retired commando (Jorma Tommila) and his beloved Bedlington Terrier against the might of the Nazi war machine. Helander returns to the director’s chair for a gleefully overblown sequel, which conceives ghoulish new ways to decapitate, dismember and disembowel enemy soldiers who dare to cross the grizzled hero’s path as he honours the memory of murdered loved ones.

During the Second World War, Finland reluctantly cedes territory to the invading Red Army, displacing around 400,000 Finns from the Karelian Isthmus and surrounding areas, most of whom will never see their homes again. Former Finnish Army commando Aatami Korpi (Tommila) is among the affected and he returns to his family plot to painstakingly deconstruct his timber-framed home and relocate the carefully numbered wooden beams on the back of a truck across the new border separating the Soviet Union and Finland.

Alas, the legend of the “the man who refuses to die” remains a thorn in the side of the Soviet army and a nameless KGB officer (Richard Brake) agrees to liberate high-ranking brute Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang) from a Siberian prison in exchange for killing Aatami. Draganov created the myth by slaughtering Aatami’s wife and two children and cutting them into small pieces with a shovel to feed to the wartime homeless. The sadistic Soviet must now accept responsibility for proving that the eponymous gold prospector is flesh, blood and breakable bones after all.

Bookmarked into seven blood-soaked chapters, Sisu: Road To Revenge is a whoop-inducing extension of the first film, which unfolds predominantly on four wheels as Aatami heads 120km west in search of a new place to call home. Helander draws inspiration from the Mad Max films to unleash automotive carnage on a gloriously grand scale (the third chapter is entitled Motor Mayhem for good reason) including logic-defying audacity with the payload of timber to escape airborne attacks and rival that preposterous yet exhilarating freeway bus jump in Speed. The splatter quotient is high as Soviet soldiers are squished under the tyres of Aatami’s truck or suffer fatal wounds to heads and fleshy extremities in nauseating close-up.

Tommila barely utters an intelligible word for 89 minutes but he communicates every eruption of incandescent rage with furrow-browed fervour while Lang’s merciless antagonist spews choice one-liners as best-laid plans are thwarted by Aatami’s unwavering resolve and outlandish ingenuity. Helander conceives a suitably grandiose final showdown – on considerably more than four wheels – that turns thumbscrews on the lead character until the squeamish and easily offended will have no choice but to look away. It’s a breathlessly choreographed blast.

Musical

Wicked: For Good (PG)

Review: The first part of Jon M Chu’s swankified film version of the blockbuster stage musical, based loosely on Gregory Maguire’s novel, concluded with Cynthia Erivo’s rousing battle cry from Defying Gravity echoing in our ears, lighting a fuse on the war for the hearts and minds of Oz. In Wicked: For Good, it has been 12 time turns since Elphaba (Erivo) – unfairly misnomered as the Wicked Witch because of her visible otherness and formidable magical powers – escaped the clutches of the fraudulent Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). The green-skinned protector of silenced animals lives in exile in the Ozian woods, plotting audacious acts of protest such as disrupting the construction of the yellow brick road linking the Emerald City to Munchkinland.

Valiant deeds are cruelly distorted by Morrible’s rival spell-casting to paint Elphaba as the villain while Shiz University roommate Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) is anointed the epitome of goodness. She travels around Oz offering comfort and joy ahead of a publicity fuelled wedding to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who still secretly holds a torch for Elphaba but must hunt her down in his new position as captain of the guards. An innocent girl from Kansas gatecrashes this Technicolour wonderland and the Governor of Munchkinland, Nessarose Thropp (Marissa Bode), and suitor Boq Woodsman (Ethan Slater) are collateral damage.

I was obsessulated, as Glinda might trill, with the first part of Wicked and the heavenly union of Chu’s electrifying direction, powerhouse performances from Erivo and Grande-Butera, Oscar-winning production and costume design, Stephen Schwartz’s music and lyrics and thoughtful script additions from Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox.

On stage, the two acts of Wicked are horribly imbalanced in terms of storytelling content, character development and running time. The same fate befalls Chu’s visually ravishing films and Part II, subtitled in honour of a melancholic duet between Elphaba and Glinda, repeats the feat of adding more than an hour of screen time yet somehow feels rushed and inelegant compared to its crowd-pleasing predecessor. Wicked: Not Quite As Good would be more fitting. Barnstorming song and dance sequences don’t gain the same dizzying altitude the second time around the Emerald City, even with the irresistible screen pairing of Erivo and Grande-Butera and more jaw-dropping technical artistry.

Two new songs written by Schwartz for the screen – No Place Like Home performed by Elphaba and The Girl In The Bubble sung by Glinda – are beautifully delivered but neither lodges securely in my memory. Returning to Madame Morrible’s disparaging quip to Shiz University students in the first film – “We have nothing but the highest hopes, for some of you!” – I sincerely hoped Wicked: For Good could resist gravity’s pull and soar where the stage version couldn’t. Chu and brilliant creative collaborators come thrillingly close for extended periods but no amount of spell-casting from the ancient Grimmerie or cinematic wizardry can obscure the inescapable reality that the best has been and gone.