Apologists for the Soviet Union frequently claim that it was Josef Stalin’s ostensibly benevolent and virtuous regime that ultimately toppled the Third Reich, winning World War II for the Allies. Such socialist-aligned revisionists are grossly mistaken, both historically and morally.
Filmmaker Jalmari Helander, in Sisu: Road to Revenge, his sequel to the 2022 sleeper hit Sisu, plants us in the grim fringes of Soviet-controlled territory in the immediate aftermath of the war and paints an appropriately merciless portrait of this torturous landscape and its pitiless potentates.
Jorma Tommila reprises his role as the reclusive Finnish war veteran Aatami Korpi. A cross between Rambo and John Wick, he is depicted as the living embodiment of the Finnish word sisu, explained in the film as “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination.” In the first film, that determination was focused on protecting a bag of gold from marauding Nazis. Here, the stakes are more intimate and far more tragic.
In a ruse to remain neutral during the war, Finland ceded territory to the Soviet Union. That political concession provides the narrative impetus for the sequel. Upon returning from his Nazi-massacring excursion in the first film, Korpi finds his once peaceful homestead, near the new Russian border, occupied by communists — and learns that his wife and child were murdered by the Red Army. The hardened soldier who communicates almost exclusively in grunts and glowers is suddenly reduced to salvaging whatever he can of his former life.
As any disgruntled legend would, Korpi single-handedly disassembles his wooden house, beam by beam, carefully marking each piece. Then he hoists them onto his muscular, sinewed shoulders, loads them onto his truck, and heads west toward the new Finnish border. If the first Sisu was about a man protecting his gold, Road to Revenge is about a widower protecting the last remnants of his family — and, of course, exacting revenge in highly entertaining fashion.
There isn’t much dialogue or introspection beyond that. In fact, the only “character development” we see on screen is Soviet soldiers rapidly developing into mangled corpses. But the film understands its assignment. The action is relentless for the full 90-minute runtime, a barrage of set pieces that rarely pauses to catch its breath. A disgruntled Finn killing communists for an hour and a half? Sign me up.
It would be dismissive to call Korpi a “Finnish John Wick,” as though he were merely derivative. His death-defying escapades are entirely his own. In one scene, outnumbered and anticipating capture, he calmly slices open his thigh and hides a shiv under his skin, an impromptu flesh sheath for later use (the film is unapologetically violent). In another memorable exchange, a nervous Soviet soldier wonders aloud if Korpi is immortal. “He simply refuses to die,” his comrade replies.
Stylistically, Helander continues to draw heavily from classic Westerns. His mythic hero comports himself with a misanthropic disposition that harkens back to Clint Eastwood’s gunslingers. It is evident from Korpi’s permanent scowl that he simply wants to be left alone, but if provoked, he has no reservations about enthusiastically killing everyone in his vicinity. One standout sequence finds him barreling down a highway with his truck stacked high with the timber of his disassembled home when a squad of Soviets on motorcycles ambushes him. The choreography of Korpi juggling the wheel while fending off hijackers attempting to clamber onto the moving truck plays like Mad Max: Fury Road on the Finnish frontier.
It is refreshing and important to see films depict the Soviet Union with such honesty, rather than as the milder ally that helped defeat Hitler. Helander rightly presents the USSR as an expansionist tyranny in its own right, a continuation rather than a repudiation of the totalitarian logic that carved up Europe in the first place. This kinder, gentler communism only exists in the fantasies of Hollywood writers and campus Marxists. Sisu, on the other hand, is 90 minutes of cinematic catharsis.
There is a dark but revealing anecdote about Czar Peter the Great, who, surveying a battlefield strewn with Russian corpses, was reassured by a general: “Do not worry. Russian mothers will produce more sons.” That wanton disregard for human life helps explain why the Soviet Union suffered the highest casualty count of any nation in World War II and why modern Russia continues to use its troops as expendable cannon fodder in Ukraine today.
THE FINAL SEASON OF STRANGER THINGS IS ARDENTLY ANTI-COMMUNIST
Road to Revenge conveys this callousness with brutal clarity. In one particularly entertaining (but macabre) sequence, Korpi flees a pair of Russian fighter planes in his truck. After he manages to down one, the pilot of the second ejects. The Soviets’ response is not to rescue their surviving airman but to carpet-bomb the entire area in an attempt to kill Korpi — accomplishing little more than vaporizing their own pawn.
It is rare for sequels to rival their originals, but Helander’s Sisu: Road to Revenge does just that, delivering a brutally satisfying reminder that for all the apologetics and historical revisionism, some regimes deserve nothing more than a one-man death squad.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.
