In the last few years, action films such as Max Max: Fury Road (2015) and the John Wick franchise have disposed of the previous decade’s interest in gritty realism. That grounded sensibility has been replaced with an over-the-top tonality that draws from video game violence, holds no allegiance to the laws of physics, and uses gore as a punchline. The more winkingly outlandish and excessive, the better. You can chart the progression with the Fast and Furious series, starting with the 2001 original, a Point Break (1991) rip-off about street racers who hijack trucks carrying DVD/VHS combo players. Twenty years later, the ninth movie had them going into space. Sisu adheres to the changing trajectory of action fare, turning the otherwise sober topic of World War II into a cartoonish spectacle of Nazi pummeling. The heightened quality of everything onscreen hopes to evoke gleeful and shocked laughter over the nonstop procession of stabbings, explosions, and dismemberments. And it mostly works. 

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