FF '25: SISU: Road to Revenge

SISU: Road to Revenge (or SI2U) is the sequel to 2022’s SISU, a Finnish action movie following Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a prospector who is pursued by Nazis in an attempt to steal his findings. In the sequel, the Russians find out that the job wasn’t finished after they killed the prospector’s family, but left him alive. A border has been established around Finland, the Soviet Union stealing the land and pushing families back, causing them to be displaced. Aatami, with nothing left but his dog and his riches from the previous film, decides to go and take the last thing that means anything to him back: his family home. 

Where SISU 2 shines is taking every element from the first movie and ramping it all up tenfold. The structure of the first film is still there, chapters and all, but the stakes are higher and a bit sillier. Instead of trying to reclaim his fortunes, he’s trying to reclaim the only remaining piece of his previous life and is driven through Hell and back to see his mission through. In the last movie, the enemies were just your standard Nazis and were a bit faceless. It's appreciated that the Nazis are without personality besides evil, but the trick wouldn’t have necessarily worked twice. Stephen Lang’s Igor Draganov is a welcome addition, giving the movie a clear villain with a motivation to keep the audience engaged between the kills. The Soviets are upset because the only person who didn’t die in Korpi’s tragic tale was Korpi himself and Draganov is sent to hunt him down and finish the job. Lang is giving the classic angry man hunting a target performance, but he really makes it work because he just looks like a vengeful old man. You could really have casted anyone for the role, but the way that vengeance looks on Lang’s face really works here. When his team of Soviets don’t succeed in killing Korpi, he never gets big and angry, but seethes and stews hoping his next plan of action will work. 

SISU 2 evolves from the first film with bigger action setpieces and a more ambitious concept with the road trip revenge thriller. The point here seems to be to dial everything up and the movie succeeds. Sure, you could get caught on how unrealistic or implausible the feats pulling off are, but if you’re going to get hung up on those things then you’re watching the wrong movie. From cars, to motorcycles, to planes and ultimately trains, this movie leaves you wondering how exactly he’s going to get himself out of the situation he’s in. If you can abandon your sense of realism, the movie will give you exactly what you want. One sequence where Korpi is being chased by two planes comes to mind and he has to use his quick thinking and environment to turn around what looks to be a dead end. That quick thinking is all on Korpi’s face and this movie provides some of the best vaudevillian humor that I’ve seen in a while. Jorma Tommila is able to make these huge faces and although he doesn’t say a word in the movie you can always tell exactly what he’s thinking. His acting also lends well to the more emotional parts of the movie, where he is clearly remembering the pain of losing his family and that motivation to accomplish his mission. 
SISU: Road to Revenge is a fitting conclusion to the story of Aatami Korpi. Coming in at a tight 90 minutes, the movie finds its pace early on and never stops moving. With a movie like this, it’s easy to complain about the violence versus the actual messaging. But, just like with the last one, the message is: Nazis are bad and they took so much from so many people. This movie gives you that in spades: lots of fun and inventive kills, some fun laughs, and some moments that make you ball up in your seat because of how gruesome they are. It’s a good time at the movies, point blank. It doesn’t try to do anything that you haven’t seen before, and it doesn’t need to.

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