Sisu: Road to Revenge (Finland/United States, 2025)

With its tongue no longer in cheek, the grimmer and more preposterous sequel to Sisu makes up in adrenaline what it loses in (gallows) humor. Unlike the first film, which often seemed to wink at the audience, this one commits fully to darker territory. The set pieces are bigger but the mission statement remains the same: watch this sympathetic Terminator shoot his way through an army of bad guys en route to a final showdown. If there’s a core problem with Road to Revenge, it’s that—despite the over-the-top mayhem—there’s not much suspense to accompany it. The hero is essentially unkillable, so there’s never even a fleeting consideration that he might not survive. Indestructibility isn’t the most compelling character trait; writer/director Jalmari Helander got away with it in Sisu because the film’s freshness made the conceit feel radical. In the second installment, it occasionally feels like a limitation.

It’s two years after Sisu, and the taciturn Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), now a Lapland legend, is fighting Soviets instead of Nazis. When the USSR annexed part of Finland at the end of World War II, Aatami’s house ended up behind the Iron Curtain. Determined to reclaim his life, he disassembles the house, loads the planks onto a truck, and plans to drive the whole thing across the Finland–Soviet border to friendly territory. Standing in his way are a ruthless KGB general (Richard Brake) and Red Army officer Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang), the man responsible for killing Aatami’s wife and child. The first half chronicles Igor’s pursuit of Aatami; in the second half, the roles reverse and the hunter becomes the hunted.

The movie is divided into chapters with titles like “Motor Mayhem” and “Incoming.” Many of the action scenes are as inventive as they are improbable: Aatami barreling his plank-laden truck through a forest at high speed, dodging motorcycles and airplanes, then getting into scrapes involving a derelict tank and a train. Like a Timex watch, Aatami keeps on ticking, even after being tortured and beaten to a bloody pulp. There’s more than a little Mad Max in the mix, and I actually stayed through the end credits to see whether Helander acknowledged George Miller’s influence (he didn’t). At a svelte 88 minutes, the film never threatens to overstay its welcome.

Jorma Tommila maintains the same stoic demeanor as in the first film, though the weight of his backstory drags him into a more somber emotional register. He speaks not a word, relying instead on the expressive techniques of silent-era actors. Stephen Lang, channeling his inner Quaritch (his Avatar villain), comes as close as anyone could to matching him as an adversary, though Tommila tends to dominate every scene by sheer force of personality. At 66, it’s remarkable how much of a beating he appears able to take. (Yes, some of it is assisted by special effects, but it’s still a grueling role.)

Sony Pictures, in a canny bit of counter-programming, has chosen to release this bloody second installment opposite the far longer and decidedly more family-friendly second Wicked movie. Minimal marketing—Road to Revenge’s publicity budget was probably smaller than the catering bill for Wicked: For Good—means this is almost destined to live primarily on streaming. (And although this is technically a foreign-language film, subtitle-phobes needn’t worry. There isn’t much dialogue, and Lang’s lines are in English.)

The bottom line is that Road to Revenge delivers. The experience isn’t as fresh as the original, but no one involved is phoning it in. The actors are committed, and Helander has staged some deliciously outlandish sequences that have to be seen to be believed. (And if you could accept the bus jump in Speed, nothing here stretches credulity much further.) Although not as good as the first Sisu—which made my 2022 Top 10 and has since become a cult favorite—Road to Revenge is a worthy follow-up.

Sisu: Road to Revenge (Finland/United States, 2025)