Finnish director Jalmari Helander already has one modern cult classic under his belt with 2010’s twisted Christmas fantasy Rare Exports. He has another at the ready in Sisu.

As a title crawl explains, practically doubling as a synopsis, the word “sisu” means white-knuckled courage that comes forth only when all hope is lost. In 1944 Finland, a battle-scarred soldier (Helander regular Jorma Tommila, Big Game) deserts the war (WWII, you may have heard of it) and wanders the sprawling vistas of the wild with his trusty dog.

Lucking into a life-changing cache of gold, he needs all the sisu he can muster, which is a lot, when tanks and trucks of Nazis cross his path. (Understandably in today’s topsy-turvy world, it’s not enough for them to be Nazis; Helander makes them child-raping Nazis.) Led by an SS officer with the appropriate name of Helldorf (Aksel Hennie, The Martian), they’re rendered surface-level despicable — more characterization than they deserve.

From there, Sisu is one set piece after another, with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of bloody action. Painted with strokes as mythic as The Man with No Name, Mad Max and Rambo, our rumored-immortal hero exacts justice that’s swift, brutal and cathartic, whether navigating minefields or hanging on an ascendant plane via pickax; not for nothing was he known as a “one-man death squad” while under conscription. Helander knows just how to handle him: as a movie icon in the making, even if his exploits are one or two reels too long in the knocked-out tooth. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

A rep-tarnished attorney in between at-law jobs, Ares has little choice than gigging as a delivery driver. His shift’s last drop-off takes him to an address bearing the number 13, so you know something’s not on the up and up. He’s knocked out and awakes with timed C-4 explosives strapped to his chest.

Via earpiece, a Jigsaw-modulated voice gives Ares (Apostolis Totsikas) a series of missions to keep the device from detonating. The fun of Short Fuse is seeing the obstacles he’s thrown at — and in between — each step, from cops and gangsters to mines and even a booby-trapped exercise bike.

Co-directed by Andreas Lampropoulos and Kostas Skiftas, the film plays like Greece’s version of David R. Ellis’ 2004 breakneck thriller, Cellular. Totsikas even seems cast from the early-career Chris Evans hothead mold. No kidnapped Kim Basinger exists here, but Evgenia Dimitropoulou (The Two Faces of January) fills the distressed-damsel role with more active participation.

With chases by wheel and by foot, gunfights galore and, yes, explosions aplenty, Short Fuse is less a white-knuckle experience, more a pleasant discovery. It may not knock your socks off, but your toes won’t get cold. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

All collagen and silicone, Carmen Electra got her first lead role thanks to The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven. A superhero film before such a thing was in vogue, it merges The Crow, Deliverance and anything ever shot in that sketchy wooded area by every neighborhood. She plays McKenna, a vengeful hussy selected to carry on the longstanding tradition of a Native American tribe. Or something like that.

It begins with her sister, Emma (Shauna Sand, former Playboy Playmate and former human), pursued by the local womanizing redneck (Michael Stadvec, The Dentist) in a town full of womanizing rednecks. He kills her to get his grubby hands on her necklace, which grants the wearer mystical tribal powers, but before expiring, she hides it under a couple of leaves. Why she didn’t use the jewelry’s functionality to escape harm, we’re not supposed to ask.

Upon hearing the news of Emma’s death, McKenna moves back home. Her old flame, Henry (Tim Bagley, The Mask), is now sheriff. He’s shacking up in a mobile home with Nora (Debra Xavier, American Vampire), who may as well be named Whora. Henry ditches her for McKenna faster than a budget divorce, naturally driving Nora to take up meth.

Meanwhile, McKenna sees visions of Natives in her bedroom, beckoning her to become “the chosen one.” (Are Carmen and the devil walkin’ side by side?) Putting in repeat visits is the spirit of Emma, whose vocal delivery leads viewers to believe director Lawrence Lanoff (Playboy: Babes of Baywatch) instructed Sand, “Hey, do your Kathy Ireland.”

So that Legend of the Raven can last longer than 30 minutes, McKenna gives in to the ghosts and wears the necklace, thus imbuing her with aforementioned mystical tribal powers. Suddenly, she’s excitedly licking her dinner plate and dry-humping the air around her. Soon, she and Henry have music-video montage lovin’. When they go at it again, it’s with a half-gallon of milk, which made me want to swear off the moo juice.

An hour into this opus, McKenna finally dons a costume as Indigenous superhero The Raven — which is to say she wears a skin-tight silver spandex onesie, complemented with spiked and steel accessories. Inversely, Nora resurfaces as an out-and-out comic-book villainess in black leather and a yard-sale Lone Ranger mask. They have a poorly choreographed fight to the overacted finish.

Continuity is absent from The Chosen One, as is a logical script. I didn’t even get to mention the subplot about the Route 33 serial killer (Lanoff himself). And check out the cutaway of birds in flight … as one poops. This is the rare movie that dares to play the line “How ’bout a knuckle sandwich?” entirely straight.

At the end, McKenna and Henry agree to eat a cow. The whole experience is best summed up by exclaiming, “Crazy. Froot Loopin’ crazy!” — a line cribbed from the Decampitated trailer preceding this Raven. Nevermore. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In a cargo ship leaving the Philippines for Busan, Korean detectives chaperone a boatload of extradited criminals. And, unknowingly, one desecrated corpse of a science-abetted super soldier with his eyes stapled shut. God forbid some rogue agent gets the not-so-bright idea to reanimate that thing!

The vehicle-bound prisoners have distinct personalities, like in Con Air. They take over the boat and hold people hostage, like in Under Siege. Someone does resurrect that Frankensteinian beast built to be virtually indestructible, like Wolverine in X-Men Origins. It even hunts its human prey in thermal vision — in color! — like Predator.

Despite these blockbuster similarities and influences, the magic of Project Wolf Hunting is how fresh it feels. In high concept and shiny sheen, it suggests a graphic novel adapted to live-action perfection; as puny prisoners are punched across long distances, you can imagine the edges of comic-book panels being burst to convey such brutal force. Yet the South Korean film’s source material is the brain of its writer and director, Kim Hongsun (2014’s The Con Artists.)

Train to Busan’s Choi Gwi-hwa may not look menacing in real life, but as Alpha, the awakened military experiment, he’s a hulking machine of intimidation. One swing of his arm can — and does — amputate another’s. He pummels through people as if their bodies were Baggies. Folks, this movie is violent. It might even spill more blood than Sam Raimi’s first two Evil Dead chapters combined. In not holding back, Hongsun delivers audience-pleasing, sphincter-clenching action on a grand scale. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

If Christopher Bickel’s Bad Girls fails to hook you in its first five minutes, here’s a list of things you must despise seeing in movies: attractive women in their underwear, attractive women out of their underwear, violent strip club robberies, car chases, car crashes, coke trips, acid trips, violent convenience store robberies, violent bar fights and violent deer collisions.

After murdering their instantly former employer and taking “a shitload of money and drugs,” three exotic dancers make a run for the Mexico border: the blonde Carolyn (Shelby Lois Guinn), the Black Mitzi Anne (Sanethia Dresch) and brunette leader Val (Morgan Shaley Renew), she of the double-height eyebrows. As one citizen tells the TV news, “They’re just like Bonnie and Clyde, but they’re all Bonnie and there’s three of ’em!”

With Bah-stun accents, bad puns and broken beer bottles galore, the ladies go from one brutal encounter to another. No male is spared, at least of humiliation, from a blue-balled frat boy to a white supremacist running a 24-hour donut and ammo shop. Stops are made for shows by bands like Christmas Tits and Poltergasm, if only to kidnap their members. The movie is one long chase, with two federal agents (Dove Dupree and Mike Amason) on their tails. “We’re gonna find ’em, fuck ’em, fry ’em and forget ’em!” vows the nasal spray-addicted agent to his partner. “Figuratively!”

Obviously influenced by Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bickel (The Theta Girl) moves his sophomore film at a jet-propulsion pace, rarely slowing to take a breath. Although stocked with music I wouldn’t listen to, the soundtrack matches the girls’ spring-loaded antics by going into Dexedrine-aggro mode, as does Bickle’s Natural Born Killers-styled editing of excess and overlays. The overall energy he conjures help mitigate deficiencies in a repetitive story and the purposely campy performances. It’s a ride, for sure, and one that dares to kill its babies. Not figuratively! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.