June 12th: Sisu: Road to Revenge

I see you one crazy old bastard and raise you one Stephen Lang with a Russian accent.

Sisu: Road to Revenge

Released: 2025

Directed by: Jalmari Helander

Starring: Jorma Tommila, Stephen Lang, Richard Brake, Simba the Dog

There is a moment in this movie where the logic goes from normal action hero being relatively superhuman and bleeds into full on Looney Tunes logic. It might be when he uses his truck to take out a couple fighter planes without firing a shot. Maybe it’s when he decapitates a guy using the front winch on the truck. Perhaps it’s when a guy’s face gets smooshed by a missile. Or maybe it’s when he creates a pocket OUT OF HIS OWN THIGH LIKE HIS LEGS ARE CARGO PANTS. Sisu: Road to Revenge takes the action to such a level, it approaches dark comedy.

The hero from the film Sisu, Aatami Korpi played again by Jorma Tommila, returns to his home in Karelia. Unfortunately for him, Karelia is now within the borders of the U.S.S.R. So he must take his things and move them to Finland. To honor his murdered family, he is loading his entire house onto a truck and moving it somewhere within the Finnish borders. The KGB finds out that the man they called “Koshchei the Deathless” during the war is coming back to their land. So they free the man who killed his family, Yeagor Draganov is as cunning, ruthless, and implacable as Korpi. The result is a Mad Max: Fury Road-style chase across the Soviet Karelia, with Korpi killing as many Soviet soldiers as possible in some of the most creatively grotesque ways imaginable.

I called the first film “a bloody good time” because of the “horror movie gore level brutal” violence. Sisu: Road to Revenge raises the bar as it just continues the brutality but this time has an equal antagonist in Draganov. Draganov moves chess pieces on the board and Korpi smashes them with a pickaxe. Literally all the sequences I describe in the opening paragraph happen, plus many more. It rivals Hundreds of Beavers in the amount of cartoonish violence — unlike Hundreds of Beavers the victims are human beings not guys in beaver mascot outfits. Also there is blood. So much blood. Every scene generates tension not because you worry Korpi will survive, but because you want to see how he is going to get out of the latest impossible scenario.

Small Observations:

• Seeing Korpi’s dog again, I refrained from looking up www.doesthedogdie.com which I do every once in a while. Every time his truck is shot or blown up or thrown into the ocean, I worried less for Korpi and definitely more for the dog.
• Both Stephen Lang and Jorma Tommila are good at playing tough old SOBs. But when Lang’s Draganov describes to Korpi how he murdered Korpi’s family, chopped them into little pieces with an iron shovel, and fed those pieces to stray dogs and the homeless, the film briefly stops being an over-the-top action movie. Lang delivers the monologue with such casual cruelty that it establishes Draganov as one of the few villains in either film who feels genuinely worthy of facing Korpi.
• Korpi is right up there with John Wick and John Rambo in the “Guy facing up to fifty soldiers on his own and the odds are definitely still in his favor” Hall of Fame. His trek through the train is the kind of thing legendary action sequences are made of.
• Seriously. A knife. In his thigh. Like flipping cargo pants. Insane.
• MCU actors: 0

Overall Rank: A

This movie takes what the first film gave and rachets up the violence and brutality. Adding a bizarro-type antagonist in Draganov is the step that is needed to make it even crazier. Lots of fun. Recommended.