SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE came out Friday. It’s a sequel to the 2022 film SISU but they didn’t put a #2 in the title, so some friends of mine saw the trailer and weren’t aware it was a sequel. I think that’s wise marketing – this is an old school standalone approach to a sequel where you wouldn’t even have to know there was another one to understand or appreciate the story. So yes, see this one first if you want to, you have my permission. But if you like either one of them I recommend watching the other.

The appeal of SISU, and now of the SISU movie series, is pretty straightforward. Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila, RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE) is a particularly Finnish bad motherfucker, a rugged and scarred ex-commando who looks more like a farmer than an action star. Stubbornness is his super power; he’ll never give up or give in, so he goes to hell and back and then back to hell again and pretty much just gets dunked repeatedly in hell until he’s totally soaked in it but he keeps clawing his way out again and anybody who does anything to him along the way dies horribly at his hands. And one important thing is that he never says a damn word the whole time, because what is there to say other than you chose the wrong Laplander to fuck with? His deeds speak for themselves

The first movie would be a clever and well executed action/revenge movie in any era, but it happened to come out when it was particularly enjoyable to see some fascists get fucked up. It took place at the end of WWII, when a band of fleeing Nazi pillagers tried to steal the gold nuggets Aatami just found, and got elaborately, joyously slaughtered for it. In Chapter 4, “The Legend” we learned the backstory that he was a Finnish commando during the Winter War, when the murder of his family John-Wick-ed him into becoming a mythical “one-man death squad” known for killing over 300 Soviet soldiers. In SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE he will get a surprise opportunity to directly avenge his family while just trying to accomplish one task that he refuses to give up on.

See, he crosses over the border to his old house in a part of Finland now annexed by the Soviet Union. He uses chalk to number the boards that make up his cabin, takes them apart one by one, piles them on his truck. I was hoping he would also take apart the doghouse next to the house, even though it would be easier to just put it in the truck intact, and I got my wish. Then he hits the road, thinking it’s the road to Finland, not the one to revenge. But it’s both.

The powers that be know about Aatami’s visit, so a KGB agent (Richard Brake, DEATH MACHINE) goes to a prison in Siberia to release the infamous war criminal Yeagor Dragunov (Stephen Lang, BAND OF THE HAND). He’s the one who killed Aatami’s son and chopped him up with a shovel, so if this guy can stop the monster he created they’ll give him his freedom. Writer/director Jalmari Helander is openly inspired by the Rambo movies (and is currently set to direct a Stallone-less FIRST BLOOD prequel), and I like how this is kind of the evil version of Rambo being recruited out of the work camp in RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II.

So there it is: he just wants to get out of there with his house, and it’s largely a chase movie. There’s clearly a big George Miller influence, particularly THE ROAD WARRIOR. Soviet soldiers with cool welding-mask-like helmets chase the truck on motorcycles, throw molotov cocktails at it, climb on top. I like how he’s not only trying to get away, but to protect the pieces of wood from damage. Even better, the truck doesn’t survive, so he (SPOILER) turns the pieces of cabin into a raft, then piles them atop a stolen tank. Before that he improvises a way to knock some off the truck just in time to make a ramp to launch a plane trying to dive bomb him. There’s a bit of a FAST AND FURIOUS or TRANSPORTER 2 approach to physics, which is way better than the stupid other kind that sucks.

I sense a bit of Spielberg in the way he continually faces new obstacles and has to improvise. Things go comically wrong and he always gets back up and silently figures out the next move. But he’s nothing like Indiana Jones, more like Rambo and John McClane in their respective sequels because he can accomplish all these preposterous feats, but not without going through tremendous trials of physical strain, pain and injury. There’s a specific reference and one-upping of DIE HARD where he has to walk bare foot over broken bottles and then (spoiler) falls backwards onto them so they stick into his back too. Come to think of it there’s almost a crucifixion quality to what he does. We watch in awe as he faces more and more pain, because we know he’s doing it for us. (For our entertainment in this case.)

This is a good international genre movie – so openly Finnish in its star and attitude, not compromising anything. Helander still uses his same cinematographer (Mika Orasmaa), editor (Juho Virolainen) and production designer (Otso Linnalaakso), and I believe stunt coordinator Roman Neso Laupmaa is Finnish (though fight choreographer Lauren Okadigbo is a stuntwoman from WONDER WOMAN and DUNE). But as long as he has this English language audience he might as well get two of Hollywood’s great evil-guy character actors, Brake and Lang, as the detestable villains. It’s always fun to see them being psychotic bastards, and this time they get to go wild with the Russian accents. More importantly we’ve seen Lang pushing his old man body to the limit committing violence in DON’T BREATHE 1 and 2 and AVATAR 1 and 2, so there couldn’t really be a more fitting opponent for this specific hero. I don’t think one exists. (If there’s a next time though, make him defeat a ridiculously fit and vain young dude, just in case there might be some guys on the older side who would appreciate the confidence boost. Who knows, I doubt it, but it’s possible.)

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE combines so many of my favorite types of movies. Aatami’s mythic presence, the dearth of dialogue and the music by Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä make it feel like a spaghetti western. The way he picks off enemies in inventively graphic ways is like a slasher movie. The elegantly simple construction of the story is like a really good action movie or western, and the imaginatively ridiculous uses of various weapons and vehicles are like a different type of really good action movie. Some movies with these qualities can be a little too sugary – I enjoy watching them and appreciate the fun time, but forget them quickly. That may not be the case with this one for the simple fact that Helander found a way to end on a genuinely emotional note that adds weight to the whole thing. (I’ll discuss specifics in a spoiler post-script below.) He’s said in interviews that he loves where this ends up and that it would make a good ending to the story, but that also he has an idea for a third one that he might want to make. I like both options. I’m grateful that I got my wish from the SISU review, which is just for him to make his next movie in a reasonable amount of time. He seems to be on a roll now, and you won’t want to get in his way.

SPOILER POST-SCRIPT ABOUT THE VERY LAST SCENE

I was so surprised that this of all movies was able to genuinely move me at the end. He’s made it home, he’s putting the house back together, suddenly a group of men (and boys) carrying hand axes and hammers and things approach. I think you probly guessed what they were there for, like I did, but both Aatami and the score assume they’re there for a fight. So he grits his teeth and grips his ax.

“We thought you could use some help,” one of them says. Those aren’t weapons they brought, they’re tools, of course. But the way Aatami chokes up, and the guy tells him he doesn’t need to say anything – man, that attaches my heart strings to a motorized reel and cranks ‘em. Even The Legend, The Immortal, the Finnish Baba Yaga, the guy who simply can’t die because he refuses, turns out to have feelings underneath. He had to do all that entirely by himself, and the idea that somebody would actually do something nice for him, that he could have some help, just overwhelms him. They know that he could use it and also that he could never articulate it. In the photos during the end credits we even see him having a laugh while they’re building. He made friends! He enjoyed a joke! Maybe even told one! I love that for him.

And I think again this is a good Rambo parallel, because it’s a little like the structure that makes FIRST BLOOD such a classic. Rambo goes through all that and then he breaks down blubbering to Colonel Trautman and we find out what’s been going through his mind the whole time. Aatami would never do that, but he’s just as broken and emotionally repressed as Rambo, and it’s just as powerful when it comes out. It’s a movie about funny ways to kill terrible people, but it’s also so much more.