“Sisu: Road to Revenge” is to “Sisu” as “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” is to “Evil Dead.” It’s a film with a similar structure and stakes that’s bigger, crazier, and more willing to lean into action and comedy dynamics that feel inspired by silent filmmaking. It’s an absolute blast of an action movie, another showcase for Jalmari Helander’s increasing skill with action choreography and inventive set pieces. Jorma Tommila returns as the franchise’s silent hero, a new variation on Mad Max in this thrill ride that’s also clearly inspired by George Miller’s action orgies. There’s a sequence early in the film under a chapter card that reads “Motor Mayhem” that’s basically “Sisu: Fury Road,” and it’s one of the most purely thrilling riffs on that 2015 masterpiece that hit theaters in the decade since. “Road to Revenge” reimagines everything that worked about “Sisu,” but it does what an action sequel should do and builds on it instead of just repeating the same barely-controlled chaos. This movie rules.
World War II has ended, and the silent warrior Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) has returned to a home that no longer contains the joyful presence of his wife and child. With his bare hands, he takes the house apart, plank by plank, and piles them onto a vehicle to drive them back to a place where he can rebuild and start over. Yes, this means our hero will be maneuvering a massive vehicle filled with giant planks of wood for much of “Sisu 2.” Let your imagination run wild and you still wouldn’t be able to predict what happens next.
Meanwhile, the legend of Sisu has grown in the region, leading a Russian general (a perfect Richard Brake) to unleash the only villain who could vanquish this hero, the Red Army officer who created him. Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang) is the man who killed Korpi’s family, and he is given the assignment of hunting him down. Broken up into chapters with title cards, “Sisu: Road to Revenge” is basically one long chase movie as Korpi tries to get his home to somewhere safe and Draganov and waves of his to-be-mutilated soldiers track him down. It is an escalating assembly of set pieces, each building on the one before, and Helander uses the chapter cards to name them. For example, “Motor Mayhem” sends masked men on motorcycles after Korpi, each of them surely uninformed on the force of nature they’re facing. Bodies hurl, cars explode, and you think that the movie may have played its best action cards early. And then it does it again in “Incoming” (think planes vs. car), and you realize that Helander has more than enough ideas for this movie’s lean, mean 88 minutes.
Helander works with cinematographer Mika Orasmaa to give “Sisu 2” propulsive, non-stop energy that uses the visual language of Looney Tunes or silent comedy as a foundation. There’s a bit late in the film in which Korpi has to navigate a room of sleeping soldiers that’s straight out of Buster Keaton, and the whole movie has that kind of “wow” sense of choreography and execution. Almost every kill feels cleverly designed, evidence of Helander’s commitment to his vision as more than just a cheap cash-in. The escalation of this film from foot soldiers to motorcycles to planes, trains, and tanks gives it a rising action that’s unusual for a film like this, one that could have easily gotten repetitive. It’s absolutely ludicrous, but Helander presents it all so confidently that we don’t question the physics of it. A bit in which Korpi uses his cargo to take down a plane is physically impossible if you pause to think about it. “Sisu 2” works so well because Helander never lets you pause to think about it.
It also helps a great deal to drop two fantastic character actors into this universe. Brake is having a blast, but it’s Lang who nearly walks off with the film, particularly great in a villainous monologue scene when he reminisces almost fondly about killing our hero’s child. It’s a reminder of how good Lang can be with the right material, and it sets the stakes for the final showdown when anyone who’s seen a movie knows that the bad guy is going to get what’s coming to him.
And that’s what really makes “Sisu 2” pretty special. We know this hero who is basically immortal isn’t going to die and we know that Helander will save his most brutal kill for the villain. And so it becomes about the journey more than the destination. Helander understands this, knowing that his thrills come from the roadblocks on Korpi’s path instead of any twists and turns in the road. Every one of those impediments to his hero’s goal becomes an almost existential threat, a challenge to Finnish legend and history. As the wounds and scars become such a part of Tommila’s performance that we can barely see the human underneath, the film leans into the mythology of this figure, someone who can overcome the impossible to achieve his goal. It’s tempting to end by noting how welcome it would be to watch him take down fascists for a third time, but this one will be hard to top.
This review was filed from the world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It opens on November 21, 2025.
