SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE. The original Sisu (2022), written and directed by Jalmari Helander is a marvelously focused action movie with nods to American Westerns but roots firmly in the history and cold mud of Finland. The movie takes its name from a Finnish word for grim determination that allows a person to push beyond mental and physical limits with stoic will. What better word to introduce taciturn former Finnish army commander Atami Korpi, played with stony intensity by Jorma Tommila, the sinewy, blood-and-gasoline-spattered embodiment of old man strength? Korpi, we learn, processed his grief over the loss of his home and family during the Winter War against the Soviets by slaughtering enough of them to earn him the Russian nickname “Koschei,” an unkillable character of folklore. His 563-mile gauntlet through barren country beset with Nazis is a gory, jolting ride in which the violence is at once utterly basic (pickax, knife) and spectacularly innovative, less in terms of effects than imagination (landmine as Frisbee, attacker as scuba tank).
The sequel pits our hero against the Red Army commander (Stephen Lang) who killed his family. (It also affords an opportunity to take a quick dip into the history of the Nazi-Finnish-Soviet cage match from 1939-45, during which time the Finns named the Molotov cocktail because they are evidently not afraid of dark humor.) It’s still Tommila’s movie, but Lang is a solid addition as a character actor/villain with compelling physical presence that is a counterweight to Tommila’s. There is as much to be enjoyed in this second bloody road trip, from shocks to guffaws, though the biggest and most outrageous stunts don’t add as much as the more straightforward moments do.
We begin in 1946, after the Continuation War, with some 420,000 Finns displaced by the Soviet incursion into Karelia, where our scarred and silent hero Korpi is headed by rickety truck with his dog, a filthy but apparently unshakeable terrier. There, he finds his old house frozen in time, with shot-out windows and abandoned plates, uninhabited since his wife and two small boys were murdered. He marks each plank of the house, disassembles the structure and loads it on the truck to bring back across the border to rebuild in Finland. At the same time, Yeagor Dragunov (Lang), the Soviet war criminal who killed Korpi’s family with extra brutality, is getting a hall pass from his Siberian prison cell to put down Korpi and with him his inspirational legend of immortality. Upon seeing him on the road, Dragunov warns a comrade, “Keep your eyes open. This one is a crafty old motherfucker,” and is immediately proven right as fists, elbows, bullets and bodies fly. The Soviet detail tracks and attacks Korpi relentlessly on his home remodel quest, the death toll rising steadily as they go.
Tommila’s face and body speak where Korpi does not, the camera pulling in to focus on his brow, the ridges of his grit-edged thumbnail and the wild whites of his eyes staring out from a mask of blood and dirt. Aside from his hand-to-hand fight scenes, his physicality conveys Korpi as a man who once cared for others but is now accustomed to suffering alone. We see it in the reverent way he touches the walls of his home and hammers his fist against them to beat back tears, and in the curious, matter-of-fact way he works his mouth to spit out buckshot or gives the dog water between battles. His rage and violence are expected, but his brief and silent transformation at the end of the film is remarkable.
Lang’s growls and scowls might have done as well as the perfunctorily blustering dialogue he’s given, and I wonder if a role with more leeway might see him stretch out at least in the direction of Rutger Hauer’s depth and mischief. But when he casually turns on the wipers to clear the windshield of a comrade’s blood, it seems awfully natural.
The airborne attacks make good use of dive bombing, shutting off engine at the top of a vertical climb to storm the target below, and the home renovation challenge of the journey has us worrying more about lumber than we probably should. This second outing escalates the Wile E. Coyote-style stunts to the point of cartoonish imitation, but those aren’t the moments that drop one’s jaw. Tarantino-esque swagger likewise pales beside Korpi’s sheer will and disregard for his own body. (One scene of Tommila alone had me fisting my hands hard enough to crack the knuckles.)
There are fine shots of spare pine forest giving way to open plains that make one regret the screen at Broadway isn’t wide enough for Helander’s lens. (Most notably, the chapter titles are cut off on either side.) There are some great fights in narrow train cars, and the pacing and tension are steady from the first skirmish onward.
Tom Cruise might consider a double feature of the Sisu duology and discover the value of getting old, rather than holding onto youth. At least for those of us of a certain age, it raises the stakes and makes us feel every abuse along the lingering ache of old hurts, physical and otherwise. Even the unkillable can feel their mortality in their joints. R. 88M. BROADWAY.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
NOW PLAYING*
BLACK PHONE 2. Scary sequel for the kids, now teens, getting supernatural calls and pursued by the masked Grabber (Ethan Hawke). R. 114M. BROADWAY.
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*Due to the holiday, updated listings from Broadway Cinema not available. For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in Holiday Gift Guide 2025.