The original Sisu was one of the most inspiring and awesome movies of 2022. It saw an almost Looney Tunes-esque level of action and horrible things happening to horrible people in the waning days of World War II. This new film, Sisu: Road to Revenge sees the return of Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi, the Finnish legend that embodies the phrase “Sisu”. It’s an untranslatable word that in Finland is a rallying cry. It also sees the return of director and writer Jalmari Helander. For the sequel, Korpi returns home after the war and Finland has ceded territory to the Soviet Union. The territory ceded happened to be where him and his family lived. The atrocities committed in this time were as bad as any in human history. Korpi’s family was slaughtered by a Soviet commander named Igor Draganov (played by Stephen Lang).

The return of Korpi and the legend he leads (he single-handedly killed over 300 Soviets, leading to a legend in Finland about him), catches the attention of the Soviet military (one of the commanders is played by Richard Brake) and they bring in Draganov to fix the mess he created. That’s the plot of Sisu: Road to Revenge. It’s not overly complicated, it’s Draganov trying to kill Korpi, and Korpi trying to physically bring his old home (that he broke down and put on a truck) to a new spot in Finland.

For the most part, the plot being so simple works. It actually works better than the previous film for motivation for the hero. In the first film, the motivation was money, here it’s revenge for his family. It only adds to the proceedings and the completely silent performance from Tommila is on the money here. He does such a great job with the action, but its really a special performance when he goes through the grief and anguish he faces. There’s a scene right at the end of the film that ends the film on a massively poignant moment that Tommila just nails.

The first half of the film is what the title suggests, its a road to revenge for both the main characters. Korpi fights in a sort of The Road Warrior kind of way against multiple Soviet bikers, cars, planes, and bombers. The second half of the film sees most of the action take place on a train, so it’s slightly stunted in that way where the halves don’t match the level of action.

The action across the board is just as cartoonishly ludicrous as the first film though. No one gets a land mine thrown at their face, but there is now a rocket to the face, and an absolute bloodbath on a train car. If you’re into the different kinds of Movie-Fu, this one features Fork-Fu, Spoon-Fu, Gun-Fu, Broken Glass-Fu, Vodka-Fu, and Knife Edge Hidden In Your Leg Skin-Fu.

If there was a song to describe Sisu: Road to Revenge, it would be “Balls To The Wall” by Accept. The movie goes full bore into the things that made the first one special, and one-ups them on an action level. There are less characters, but Stephen Lang makes up for that with a delightfully evil performance. He’s not quite mustache-twirling, but with a silent protagonist, Lang picks up the slack with one-liners.

Overall, outside of Lang, though, the villains here feel much more stock, more disposable, and less evil overall. Korpi doing Bugs Bunny things to them is still entertaining as hell, but this doesn’t feel as full as the previous film did. There’s a lot to like, cartoonish action, another excellent performance from Jorma Tommila, and some great cinematography. Sisu: Road to Revenge is more of the brand of action we loved with the first film, but a bit lesser of a film.

Sisu: Road to Revenge releases in theaters on November 21st, 2025.

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