On the Highway to Hell

In 2022 we got Sisu, a film about a former soldier (and confirmed best killer Finland had ever produced) was forced to pick up his weapons and get to killing once more. It’s a gory, glorious movie where our silent, almost John WickStarted as a tale of redemption and then revenge (in that order), the John Wick series has grown to be a adynamic, reliable action series that doesn't skimp on the hard hits and gun-toting thrills, elevating Keanu Reeves as one of the greatest action stars ever.ian protagonist kills everyone who comes at him in spectacular, splattery fashion. And you enjoy it, as much because the action is good as because our protagonist, Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), kills so many Nazis. They’re our default bad guy for a reason, and the film doesn’t have to spend much time explaining why.

That film was a hit, with Sisu making $14.3 Mil at the Box Office on a budget of €6 Mil (so it made somewhere around double its budget). That performance, plus good buzz, decent home video sales, and licensing residuals, meant that a sequel could get the greenlight. Three years later, then, along came Sisu: Road to Revenge, where our same Finnish commando has to once again bring out his particular set of skills to kill even more mothas that get in his way. This time, though, it’s not the Nazis but the Russians that decided that attacking Aatami was a good idea. They were wrong.

As we learn, Aatami found his battle rage when a Russian commander, Yeagor Draganov (Stephen Lang), was set to wipe out every Finnish person living in land that Russia claimed during World War II. Aatami’s family, his wife and two sons, were killed as part of the cleansing, and Aatami carried that with him as his motivation, killing over three hundred Russians in the war and becoming something of a legend (and a curse) among the Russian military. By 1946, with the war over, all Aatami wants (now that he’s rich off gold from the first film) is to claim his old house from back in Russia and move it to Finland where he can rebuild it and have the memories of his family with him always.

However, by crossing the border into Russia Aatami alerted the Russians that he was in their land (as they had to check his paperwork). The higher ups pull Yeagor out of prison (where he’d been rotting for years) with the promise of his freedom if he completed his one, outstanding task: kill Aatami, by any means necessary. So as Aatami drives back to the border, the logs and planks of his house stacked up in his massive truck, out comes the Russian commandos under Yeagor’s command, ready to do anything to take this man that will not die down once and for all.

Like the first Sisu, its sequel, Sisu: Road to Revenge, is a bloody, violent, and at times quite silly affair. It’s a movie where one man (a man in his mid-60s, no less) is somehow able to take on wave after wave of commandos all set to kill him, and he somehow succeeds. To enjoy this movie you have to be able to buy into the concept that this man is very good at what he does, and simply cannot be killed, no matter what. If you can do that, then you’re going to have a good time. He’s John Wick, in effect, but older, harder, and in a different time period. For many that’s all you’ll need to know.

Structurally the film is two parts Mad Max: Fury Road, one part gory torture porn. The opening two acts see Aatami, on his own, driving back to Finland from Russia, while every vehicle Yeagor has at his disposal chases after the man. It’s a road trip convoy, with mega-violence, gore, and explosions, and it really did feel like a post-WWII Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s a starting point, with a destination in mind, and our hero has to get there. Everything else is violence on top of that storyline.

And it works. You’re invested in the film, wanting to see how Aatami is able to best all these soldiers while keeping the pieces of his house more or less intact. He’s got his goal of rebuilding his house, so the pieces of it are as important to him as his overall mission. You want to see him succeed because preserving the memory of his family feels even more important than all that gold he was trying to keep in the first film. This is personal, it’s real stakes, and the more Aatami succeeds, the more invested you get.

Unfortunately it’s during the final act of the film where things fall apart a bit. The film was already ridiculous, to a point, in its first two acts but it still found something akin to a grounded reality. In the third act, though, Sisu: Road to Revenge jumps the shark a bit (or really, jumps the tank, and once you watch the film you’ll understand). It goes from somewhat grounded to almost ridiculously cartoonish, and any sense of that reality we had in the first two acts is thrown out of the window entirely. Aatami goes from man who can’t be killed because he’s just too good at what he does and becomes a superhero, in effect, shrugging off damage that would have killed lesser men.

It’s also gory and painful to watch to a point that made me think of torture porn. A few of the sequences are hard to stomach, and it feels like the writer/director, Jalmari Helander, was more interested in constantly upping the pain that Aatami goes through than in actually trying to tell a cogent and interesting action story. I felt my interest wane a bit in this last act right as the film should have been building to a propulsive ending, and while it certainly does finish out with a massive climax, it’s hard to say that it really felt proper or earned.

That sucks because I really like the character of Aatami. He’s a silent protagonist but Tommila does so much to make the performance work. Even when the first film got a little ridiculous (the plane crash that capped the film should have been the end of our hero, no matter how the film tries to sell it) it was still fun to watch. Sisu: Road to Revenge is pretty fun, albeit ridiculous at times, for its first two acts but that last act left a bad taste in my mouth to the point where I don’t know if I’d want to watch yet another film about the main character if this is what we’re going to get. Violence is one thing, but you don’t need to make it torturous as well.

Not that I’m certain a third film will happen. Although Helander has discussed that he has a trilogy in mind for these films, Sisu: Road to Revenge only made $9.8 Mil on its $12,2 Mil budget. That ranks it as a flop in theaters so it would have to do really well in sales and streaming to have any chance of a continuation. It’s hard not to think that what turned me off on this film may have turned others off as well. Something about this film doesn’t sit right, even as it provides plenty more of the Sisu action we’ve come to expect.

It’s just not as solid of a film as the first movie. I like the story that Sisu: Road to Revenge sets up, and I think there are places this character could go that would be interesting to watch. But if all we’re going to get is cartoon action and torture porn, that’s going to make a third Sisu film a hard pass for me. I didn’t enjoy Sisu: Road to Revenge as much as I would have liked, and it all comes down to that last act that betrays the film before it. If we’re going to do all this again, Helander really needs to get his focus back on what works about Sisu.