There was no obvious need for a sequel at the end of “Sisu.” Jalmari Helander’s 2023 historical thriller follows a grizzled Finnish man who battles a crew of Nazis trying to steal his gold and finishes the job so definitively that he probably accounts for a solid 30 percent of the German casualties in the Lapland War. But when your protagonist is so hard to kill that his enemies call him “The Immortal,” it would be a shame to waste the franchise potential when so many other nefarious actors occupied the world stage in the 1940s.
Helander’s follow-up, “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” shifts its ire from Nazis to Soviets, but the narrative bones remain nearly identical to the first film. A group of World War II-era bad guys once again mess with the wrong senior citizen, who has endured so much loss that he now has nothing to lose, and he proceeds to unleash his wrath on every last one of them. Lest anyone was concerned that it would change the formula too much, the sequel even opens with the exact same title card: Sisu is a Finnish word that cannot be translated. It means a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination. Sisu manifests itself when all hope is lost.
That form of courage and unimaginable determination is once again embodied by Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), who can’t get the world to leave him alone, no matter how hard he tries. After spending World War II searching for gold in the wilderness outside Helsinki, he’s made it back to his old home in Soviet-occupied Karelia by 1946. The house is filled with bittersweet memories for Aatami, who raised a family in it before Russian troops killed his wife and children. Simultaneously needing a fresh start but unable to sever his last physical ties with his murdered loved ones, he disassembles the house and loads the lumber onto his truck with the hope of rebuilding it somewhere free of Russian interference.
But when Russian troops get word of Aatami’s presence, they can’t leave well enough alone. Sadistic Red Army officer Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang) — a villain so black-and-white that he casually remarks that he has killed so many women and children that their final screams all run together — is tasked with finishing the job he started when he murdered the rest of Aatami’s family. He enlists the empire’s finest land, air, and sea forces to stop the man they call “The Immortal” by any means necessary. But if “Sisu” taught us anything, it’s that there aren’t enough means in the world to bring down Aatami Korpi.
Despite being subtitled like a direct-to-VOD Steven Seagal film, “Sisu: Road to Revenge” was clearly crafted by artists who know what they’re doing and care about the finished product. No movement is ever wasted, and the elegant fight choreography keeps things moving swiftly enough to ensure we never have time to stop and consider how thin some of the character development is. Like its predecessor, it lacks some of the operatic grandeur of the “Mad Max” films that inspired the franchise, but it makes up for it by limiting itself to 90 minutes of morally unambiguous thrills before letting everyone get on with their day.
Helander seems well aware that those high-octane battle sequences and seemingly invincible protagonist remain the franchise’s main selling points, but “Sisu: Road to Revenge” ends with a coda that at least raises questions about the toll that such a bloody life can take on a human being. It’s not clear where else the series has to go — both in terms of the character’s journey and the fact that Finland only had so many geopolitical foes in the 1940s — but if the story ends here, our journey with Aatami will have been a satisfying one.
Then again, we also said that after the first “Sisu” movie, so who knows what Helander and company are capable of cooking up next.
Grade: B
A Sony Pictures release, “Sisu: Road to Revenge” opens in theaters on Friday, November 21.
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