‘Sisu: Road to Revenge’ movie review: Jorma Tommila exacts bloody vengeance in a stoic, cathartic splatter-fest

What a lean, mean fighting machine this sequel from Finnish director Jalmari Helander is! After bashing endless waves of wicked Nazis in 2022’s Sisu, the sequel, also written and directed by Helander, finds our silent commando/prospector, Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), on a new mission. It is 1946 and Korpi heads to his family home in Karelia, which was ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland in 1944.

Korpi decides to dismantle the family home, where his wife and young sons were brutally killed by the Soviets, and rebuild it on Finnish soil. He loads up his truck with all the wood from the house (including the kennel) and sets off for the border with his faithful Bedlington Terrier. However, there is evil about: a KGB officer (Richard Brake) releases Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang), the Red Army officer responsible for killing Korpi’s family, from prison in Siberia to hunt and end Korpi’s legend as Koshchei (”the Immortal”).

There follows a brutal cross country hunt where Helander’s inspirations from Indiana Jones (the planes, trains, tanks and motorcycle chases do remind one of the Fedora-toting adventurer-archaeologist) and James Bond to Buster Keaton are riotously unleashed.

Mika Orasmaa’s cinematography is exquisite, recreating a Commando comic-like look and feel. The shot of the plane going up in the air vertically, causing the propeller to sputter to a stop as the fuel cannot reach it, and then swooping to start again, is breathtaking. As are the shots of the plane flying beside a cliff, or the one of planes flying over a field reminding one of Ridley Scott’s “plane over swimming pool” shot.

A still from ‘Sisu: Road to Revenge’
| Photo Credit:
Sony Pictures

The sound design is also fascinating—with the clinks and clanks of the basic metal vehicles, be they tanks, trucks, trains, or planes, overlaid with a grungy heavy metal sound. Sisu, the film says in the beginning, is an untranslatable Finnish word standing for “white-knuckled courage and unimaginable determination,” which is seen in both Korpi’s determination to rebuild his home and Draganov’s need to destroy the myth of the immortal Korpi.

The unbelievable violence (characters use windscreen wipers to clear the gore!), and chapter titles emblazoned in bright pops of colour brings to mind Tarantino, but that is not to say Sisu: Road to Revenge is a pastiche of action films that have gone before — from Rambo and Chuck Norris films to all our one-man army masala films in Hindi or Telugu. Sisu: Road to Revenge is its own film, complete with a silent, single-minded hero, blindingly brutal action, a slim, spare storyline, and a very sweet, loyal dog. 

Sisu: Road to Revenge is currently running in theatres