You’ve got to respect a sequel that not only recognises the strengths of its predecessor, but doubles down hard when bringing them to the fore. Take Jalmari Helander’s follow up to his raucous, bombastic, World War II, neo-Western slayathon, Sisu, which featured its ridiculously grizzled, nigh unkillable lead tearing his way through the ranks of an ailing German army in order to secure his gold. Excelling as a stripped back revenge movie that delighted in its highly creative and excessive kills, the movie kicked some serious ass, so it would have been insane not to capitalise on it for a much welcome sequel.
Thus we get Sisu: Road To Revenge (or Si2u, if you’re feeling cheeky), a follow up that has us witness Jorma Tommila’s determined Aatami Korpi embark on another emotional mission as he slaves to bring his old family house out of Soviet territory log by log, to rebuild it in Finland. Of course, someone is unwise enough to stand in his way and so the usual, outlandish, savage shenanigans ensue – so buckle up, because things are about to get even bloodier than before.
Finnish him!
The year is 1944, the war is over and it’s been two years since ex-commando Aatami Korpi (aka. “the man who refuses to die”) made his gold discovery after brawling with Nazis in Lapland. In the aftermath of the war, Finland has ceded territory of Karelia over to the Soviet Union as part of the peace treaty, but a major draw back of that us that Korpi’s old family house now stands in Russian land. Seeing how his family were brutally murdered during the war, Korpi plans to drive his oversized truck through the Russian border, dismantle his house, load it on the back (by hand!) and bring it back in pieces in order to put it back together on Finnish soil. It’s not what I’d call an unreasonable demand, however, when the Red Army discover that this legendary soldier is back in the neighbourhood, the KGB hatch a plan to destroy him in order to dismantle his legacy at it was the Soviets who killed Korpi’s wife and sons which in turn created the man Aatami became.
In order to erase this black eye, the KGB spring Igor Draganov out of a Siberian prison to face and kill Korpi. Why him? Because he’s the one who had Aatami’s family murdered and cut into little pieces with iron shovels of course – and so while Korpi locks in while transporting his dismantled house and all of its memories back across the border, Draganov is given licence to unleash all kinds of hell in order to erase him – and the legend of Sisu – off the face of the earth.
Of course, even though waves of troops, armoured bikers, fighter planes and all manner of other methods of warfare is trained against him, Korpi isn’t known as the man who refuse to die for nothing – and you best believe he’s feeling extra stubborn today…
So, admittedly there’s not a whole lot that’s overly new going on with Sisu: Road To Revenge, but while Jalmari Helander seems utterly disinterested about reinventing the wheel, he is intensively invested in refining it and stripping it down to be the sleekest form it can possibly be much in the way Evil Dead 2 smoothed off some of its predecessors rougher edges. The result is a near-plotless action romp that careens wildly from one ludicrous action sequence to the next that once again chooses to amusingly play fast and loose with the laws of physics and the edges of what the human body can endure without collapsing into a bloody pile of boneless jelly. The set-up is simplicity itself – instead of gold, the thing Korpi is fighting for this time is something simultaneously less and more valuable than gold as he embarks on yet another torturous journey just to reclaim a house full of memories from enemy territory. With his legend already established in the first film, the sequel is free to just get down and dirty as quickly as possible and instead of him chipping away at frozen ground in order to find shiny nuggets, the film starts with the disturbingly buff and leathery form of our hero engaging in yet more backbreaking labour as he single-handedly breaks down his house after staring forlornly at the memories of a family long dead. It’s all the character set up we get and it’s all the character set up we need as from there the film is free to go to Fury Road style lengths in order to pulp as many Russkies as humanly possible in under an impossibly lean hour and a half.
It’s remarkable how much anger, pain and agony Jorma Tommila still manages to etch onto his face while not having to utter a single word (something the film plays with to amusing effect), but the fact that he still manages to accurately convey what Korpi is thinking while additionally covered in prosthetic wounds and at least an inch of fake blood is nothing short of remarkable. However, despite the fact the film has a cast as minimalist as the heroes dialogue, Sisu 2 pulls a blinder by perfectly casting Stephen Lang as the antagonist which means we get two, mean, old, grizzled bastards for the price of one. Why cast a young man as the arch villain when you can end the film with two weathered warriors beating the ever living fuck out of each other, both eager to prove that their each as hard as nails – and they don’t come much harder than Quaritch from Avatar.
If the film has a weak spot (and it’s not much of one if I’m being honest) it’s that the surprise factor of the original film has been lost slightly. While back in 2022 we simply didn’t see Sisu coming until that first mine whizzed through the air to connect with the helmet of a hapless Nazi, here we’re fully prepped to see some crazy shit go down and while the first half of the film goes hard to remain in constant motion as Korpi out fights, out wits and out flanks all manner of foes with extremely gory results, we’re sort of expecting it – even when he’s flipping a tank over barricades with the aid of explosives and deflecting entire planes on suicide dives just with a casual press of the brakes. However, while the movie often flirts with the absurd and throws numerous explosions and bursting bodies in you face, it’s the second half of the film where Herlander’s epic really comes into its own. Taking the foot of the gas and indulging in some slower, more subtle setpieces, Sisu: Road To Revenge mines a different kind of gold with a sequence that sees a mangled Korpi having to sneak through numerous carriages filled with snoozing guards, trying to manoeuvre his way between their dangling limbs and silently trying to kill anyone who wakes. It’s evilly funny and almost feels like the union of John Rambo with Laurel & Hardy and the measured, savage slapstick continues into the final brawl with Draganov that sees them stabbing each other with cutlery that they’ve already been stabbed with.
While the sequel can’t quite match the surprise factor of the original, Helander and Tommila’s second outing still presents us a more polished, more frenzied entry that still forces out the shocked belly laughs with every outlandish kill. War purists may be horrified at the outlandish shit the movie has the balls to pull and Korpi’s survival skills are rivalling Jason Voorhees at this point, however, if you’re down for a fucked-up trip, the Road To Revenge is certainly the route to take.
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