Sisu (2023) and They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

[shevek]

For a 2023 palate-cleanser from all of the failed corporate blockbuster tanked this year by audience disinterest, ideological wokeness, or superhero fatigue, or the societal re-wiring caused by the pandemic (whichever cause you feel like attributing it to), I watched these two 2023 movies back to back. I was also going to include Poor Things, but the version I found was unwatchable.

What ties these two movies together? Surprisingly, superheroes and science-fiction - which is why I'm posting these two reviews on this Forum, and together as one.

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With They Cloned Tyrone (which I watched first), we have a dystopian black suburban ghetto where everyone is secretly under the surveillance of a vast underground government experiment whose ultimate mission is to "improve" society by making everyone both think the same and look the same (as clones of each other).

If that sounds familiar, sure, it has aspects of both classic dystopian parodies like Truman Show and Idiocracy, and the more recent black sci-fi dystopian thrillers like Us and Sorry to Bother You.

But are the protagonists superheroes, and are the antagonists supervillains? You bet. First of all, they're blockbuster superhumans in a quite literal sense: John Boyega (Finn in Star Wars), Teyonnah Parris (Monica Rambeau in Marvel), and Jamie Foxx (Electro in Sony Spider-Man). Kiefer Sutherland might as well be a superhero too as Jack Bauer in 24. So, these aren't no-names - everyone knows who they are and that they can perform in action roles.

And they do. Boyega, Parris and Foxx form a classic blaxploitation triumvirate that's really not too different from, say, Luke Cage + Iron Fist + Misty Knight. The exuberant, over-the-top characterization makes you want to follow their adventures.

Yet tropes do abound. The very idea of an underground conspiracy to control black people through drugs (although in this movie they add gangsta rap and fried chicken) has already been done in a superhero show: Black Lightning. And this must be the dozenth movie to try and impress us with the time-tested sci-fi chestnut of endless rows of naked bodies sealed up in suspended animation pods which can be 'decanted' through the draining of the preservation fluid.

And there's something I just don't understand: if you're going to have an underground laboratory with hundreds of wimpy scientists (who run around like chickens with their heads cut off at the first sign of trouble), why don't you have a whole bunch of hardened soldiers guarding the facility in case a 'revolution' ever happens? The three bad-ass leads bring an 'army' in from the ghetto to take the lab complex down but there is literally no resistance from anyone - no serious firefights or peeking around corners, no tension in the final battle whatsoever.

It's also very unclear how thousands of secret government employees in underground labs under several different cities can keep this massive program hush-hush for so long. I mean, this is slavery and mind-control: there's no progressive in the ranks who's going to whistleblow or violate an NDA? And the director is very careful to make all of the underground lab employees 'white' - I don't see any diversity in the ranks of evil. You're telling me there wouldn't be a bunch of Chinese and Indian techs willing to take that money? Probably pays pretty good.

It's also unclear to me why, if they had a perfectly operable vehicle, these three didn't just drive straight out of their ghetto and to a nearby major city to reveal the details of the labs to a large newspaper or TV station. With all their money and funding, it looked to me like the underground program only had *one* van roaming the streets and doing damage control - they couldn't have outrun (or outshot) that one van to get to safety?

Anyway, even with these flaws, it was an enjoyable time, and I'll give it an 8/10.

You can understand one of the reasons why The Marvels flopped: Teyonnah Parris has a very sexy body, and she is decked out in body-hugging finery as the bad-ass hooker 'Yo-Yo' throughout this film. Had she, and the other two 'Marvels', worn tight spandex outfits in The Marvels, that would have come a long way to bringing the boys to the yard. She is a gorgeous woman, and one of the main reasons to see this film.

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Sisu, a Finnish film, is also about overcoming what seems like an extremely adversarial situation, like They Cloned Tyrone.
But here, it's not a team or a community that does it - it's just one man, beating all the odds (women come in later, as I'll explain).
This man defines the Finnish term "Sisu" which literally means the ability to overcome any obstacle through levels of foolhardy courage.

No matter how you slice it, the main character in Sisu is a superhero, figuratively a Finnish Captain America or Rambo, representing the country's indomitable spirit during the short Lapland War in which the Finnish fought the Nazis to expel them from occupying their homeland.

This sounds very noble, but the film leaves out two major points:

1) The Finns were actually ALLIED with the Nazis for most of WWII, fighting on the Reich's behalf against the Russians and doing quite an amazing job of it. See the real-life story of the Finnish sniper who had the most confirmed kills of anyone in war history: 500. This film is partially based on him.

2) The Finns only expelled the Nazis after their peace agreement with the Russians compelled them to do so. Otherwise, the Finns had a natural mad-on for the Russian invaders and would have continued fighting them. The Finns' ire for the Nazis was really only stoked when the retreating Germans practiced a 'scorched earth' policy, razing and burning Lapland as they retreated, in order to leave nothing for the Russians to use against them. This is shown in the movie with the city Rovaniemi in flames, etc. But the only difference is here in the movie, the discovery of gold nuggets gives the rogue Nazi commander and his forces a reason to disobey the withdrawal order and turn back. In real life, all the Nazis retreated as fast as they could.

Anyway, back to the superhero mode. The main character is portrayed as being so indomitable that he is virtually unkillable. They even use the Russian nickname for him "Koshchai" which is from a Russian/Slavic legend of an immortal, unkillable being (Koschei the Deathless) and has previously been used as a character in comic books from companies such as Dark Horse, Boom!, and Zenescope. Of course, the Russians consider Koschei to be a evil god, so it's no surprise that they apply an evil nickname to their Finnish enemy. He's the hero of the story, however, from the Finnish perspective and from that of the viewer.

Time and time again, this man escapes death, with his inevitable goal being to recover the gold deposits that the Nazis have stolen from him (Nazis stealing gold has been a big trope in movies, all the way to Indiana Jones). He's all alone in his efforts, until he manages to free a bunch of captive Laplander girls from the back of the retreating truck, and they take matters into their own hands.

This is where things get quite unbelievable and this movie moves firmly into both superhero and action hero (Expendables, Rambo) territory.
I can understand the main character overcoming the unbelievable odds. But the captured women have a sudden ability to use automatic weapons without being shown. One woman has the sudden facility to drive a huge Nazi truck. And then finally, the women have a sudden ability to drive a tank for dozens of miles straight into the arms of the waiting Finn soldiers. It seems a bit much, and in line with the whole "woman power" scene that every movie seems to need to display these days.

Yet I have no problem with it. Why? Because it's a superhero flick and even though it's based on a real war, the action is definitely fantastical (I mean, the main character throws live explosive mines at the enemy!). So when you see a line of hot women, covered with the dust of war, marching in a line with guns, just think of all the "Amazon" pictures of the 80s, transplanted into a war scenario, and that's what this is. Not to mention that the casting is almost fastidiously authentic. These woman all look like Finns - there's no "Panderverse" at work here, as there would be if this had been a Disney flick, which would have found some flimsy excuse for a multi-ethnic cast to somehow appear in the Lapland wilderness.

In fact, the only casting which pulled me a little bit out of an otherwise extremely immersive experience of intoxicating violence, blood and gore
was the tank driver, "Schutze", who looked far too much like a Lapp (Asiatic features) to have a German name and rank. He is indeed a Finnish actor with apparent Lapp ancestry. That's also why I wasn't surprised at what ultimately happened to him in the movie, but I was under the impression that he was some sort of "Lappdog" for the Nazis, joining their side, but nope, he's just simply a German character.

Oh, and there's one final trope which needs to be mentioned. The music in this movie is reminiscent of The Mandalorian, and that's because there are serious aspects of the action which are reminiscent of Sergio Leone films in which the music of Ennio Morricone was used. So, if you are a fan of Italian spaghetti westerns where one man triumphs over the hanging gallows and shoots his way out of predicaments against all odds, you may consider "Koschei" the Finnish Clint Eastwood, and groove along to the stirring soundtrack.

I'd been hearing for months from the pop culture skeptic crew on Youtube about how good this movie was. So I'm glad I took the time to check it out. It's a pretty monumental accomplishment for an action movie, and I give it the highest marks except for a bit of some of the unbelievability.

9.5/10 for Sisu. Probably the best movie of the year unless you maybe think Godzilla Minus One is better.

The women in the film are the female Finnish Expendables. To be honest, this scene is pretty hot. Imagine if these were women of the dusty American Prairie rising up after an embattled Red Dawn and you get the idea of why a line of ladies with guns warms the blood.

What's interesting about how the tables turn for the women's fate is that they start out not only as captive, but they are put in extreme danger and peril. Frankly, I was expecting rape or insinuations of sexual abuse in the truck from the lascivious Nazi boys, but none of that came. Instead, we get the vicious Nazi commander tying two of the women up and forcing them to walk in front of the tank as human mine-clearing devices, like animals.

It really impresses the brutality of the situation upon the viewer.

If you have a bit of time, check these movies out as an end-of-year treat, just like I did. I very much doubt you'll be disappointed.

[Dogfish]

Simo Hayha the Finnish sniper you mention was in the Winter War, some time before Finland had any formal cooperation with the Nazis. Given he never added to his bodycount after the Winter War have to presume he sat WW2 and the other wars with the USSR out.

[MightyHypnotic]

I think your images got lost in the transfer

[shevek]

Simo Hayha the Finnish sniper you mention was in the Winter War, some time before Finland had any formal cooperation with the Nazis. Given he never added to his bodycount after the Winter War have to presume he sat WW2 and the other wars with the USSR out.

Yes I'm aware it's based on the sniper who had 500 confirmed *Russian* kills in the Winter War.

My guess is that the filmmaker set the movie during the Lapland War instead so there could be a battle against the Nazis. Not only would it have been awkward to admit in 2023 that the Finns were Nazi allies for some time during that time period (because the Russians' imperialism was a much greater threat), but to depict him fighting Russians would also have been awkward, given the uneasy peace between Finland and Russia at the present time, especially after Finland joined NATO last year.

I think your images got lost in the transfer

No, they didn't. They were uploaded correctly, and they showed up in the posts, but then they *disappeared*. (which I just noticed, since you topped the thread). So I've just removed the image listings.

This happened to be a couple days on another thread, as well. I think for some reason the Forum isn't *retaining* some images once they're uploaded.