Sisu: Road to Revenge

4 outta 5

Sisu: Road to Revenge is fun theatrical counter-programing to Wicked for Good. It is probably accurate that Sisu features more bloody mutilations and gunfire.  Sisu: Road to Revenge isn’t a film with much depth as this is basically just action and mayhem hung together. But the first Sisu film was basically that as well. All the plot happens before the movie kicks off, and this is just the carnage. Happily, the action scenes here are great as they’re intricate clockwork pieces of cascading chaos. This goes hard and dark, and with some awesome evil bits from the main bad guy. This is yet another entry in the jacked angry old man genre of action films, but one of the more ticked off ones.

Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) is a Finnish soldier living in post-WWII when the Soviets expanded their territory to take over a chunk of Finland. Aatami’s family was killed years ago and he is trying to achieve some peace by dismantling their home and moving it across the border. On his tail are Russian soldiers who know about his insanely brutal killing spree of enemy soldiers. To stop him, a devious KGB officer (Richard Brake) releases from prison Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang) a Soviet officer responsible for killing Aatami’s family. They follow Aatami who is driving a truck full of logs of his former home and attack him in various ways. By car, by plane, and he keeps going. Eventually, they end up on a train to a Russian gulag, and when Igor reveals he killed Aatami’s family, it enrages the old man who is determined to kill an entire train of Soviet soldiers.

The movie’s story is fairly nonexistent as the main character’s family died off screen before the events of the film. This is about one insane action scene after another. But it doesn’t feel numbing, it is engaging to see the crazy action beats that happen. There is a sort of Buster Keaton, Looney Tunes manic energy to the action, like Three Stooges but excessively bloody. When two airplanes are chasing after Aatami in the truck, it seems an easy way to take him out as they’re planes that can drop bombs and he’s in a freakin’ truck. But incredibly Aatami manages to take them both out, in inventive ways. When the one plane tries to divebomb suicide strike his truck, Aatami lets the logs on his truck fall forward and then the plane bounces off it and crashes into the ground. It is absurdly illogical but fun to watch. The film is incredibly bloody to the point of gore overload but the little surprises during action beats is what makes it lively and messy.

The main character doesn’t really say much so a lot of Tommila’s performance is a series of grunts, yells and intense glares. But he is good at grunts, yells and intense glares. He has a righteous anger that his family was taken away from him, and he rains destruction upon his enemies like the wrath of God. A lot is communicated just by his actions, like when he looks at a photo of his family and holds back tears, it speaks volumes. A moment when he breaks free of his chains in a berserker rage makes Aatami look like a monster. Another important aspect is how Tommila sells the action and his physicality, like when he’s tiptoeing through a train of sleeping Soviets. He must slide silently in between soldiers hanging off bunks and walk on broken glass without making a sound. Angry old man action is getting a bit repetitive but since Tommila sells it so well, it gets a pass.

While most of the movie Aatami is fighting against nameless Soviet soldiers, he does get a main antagonist here in Lang’s Igor. Getting Stephen Lang to be a bad guy is always a solid choice, and he does great stuff with simple single lines. He gets in one very good villainous monologue where he says he doesn’t remember the atrocities that he committed in war time, but he does remember Aatami’s family, and what he describes is what makes Aatami insane with rage. Lang’s character gets an amazing exit from the film where he ends up very up close and personal with a missile that is just hilariously crazy. The other bit of villainy is Brake’s KGB officer, and Brake is an actor who has a very striking visual look and is very good at snarling evil. Just him simply describing Aatami’s history and what Igor did sounds menacing. There is also a bit when the KGB officers sit down for a dinner with Igor that has excessive bloodshed and Brake sells the officer going into panic mode as he tries to save his life.

Sisu: Road to Revenge is not a complicated movie. Guy is followed by a bunch of Soviet officers and then proceeds to kill them all. The inventiveness is in how the action progresses and how each moment reveals another consequence of the action. Road to Revenge gets incredibly gory as this a movie that unabashedly enjoys reveling in the carnage.