23/11/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

I missed Sisu on its first release, but caught up with it on streaming some time later. It was easy to see why it was such a hit in its native Finland and why so many people had raved about it. This simple, action adventure in which a near-silent old man single-handedly despatched an entire battalion of Nazis in ever-more inventive ways was a thoroughly decent watch. And who doesn’t want to see Nazis get their comeuppance?

But of course, Sisu’s success meant that there would be the inevitable sequel. And what’s left to say?

Writer/director Jalmari Helander has fallen back on the age-old technique of telling the same story again but making it bigger, louder and even more unbelievable. He’s switched out those pesky Nazis for some caricatured Russians and thrown in a George Miller-esque vehicle chase and an aerial sequence for good measure. Plus some very big explosions.

It’s 1946, the war is done and dusted, and Helander’s silent hero, Aatami (Jorma Tormilla), has decided to nip across the newly-instigated border to take his old home apart plank by plank so he can transport it back to a new location, where he plans to rebuild it… as you do.

But when a top-rank KGB officer hears what’s happening, he releases imprisoned Red Army leader Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang) and instructs him to go in pursuit of Aatami and.. ahem… finnish him off. Draganov is, of course, the man who killed Aatami’s wife and two children, utilising the unusual method of cutting them to bits with a spade, something he’s so proud of he mentions it twice.

All this information is imparted in the film’s opening fifteen minutes and the rest of it (aside from a short coda) is devoted to the ensuing mayhem as Aatami slaughters what feels like the entire male population of Russia with a series of increasingly outlandish improvised weapons. This is a man capable of turning a paper handkerchief into something with the killing potential of an AK47. While I’m happy to suspend my disbelief to a certain level, I have to draw the line at watching him deflect an approaching fighter plane with a length of roof timber, or propelling a train along a track at super speed simply by igniting the rocket it’s carrying on a flatbed.

Yes, I know, it’s not meant to be realistic – but neither is it a superhero film and Aatami’s abilities somehow feel more suited to that genre.

More worrying to my mind are the later scenes where Aatami is captured and brutally tortured by the people who have simply been instructed to kill him. The damage inflicted upon his bare flesh borders on the prurient. And God forbid if at some point we had flashbacks to earlier days and his memories of that family he spends all his time trying to avenge. It’s almost amusing to learn that Tormilla is a respected theatrical actor in his homeland, when all he’s required to do here is bleed copiously, grunt when he’s obliged to walk barefoot on glass and occasionally decapitate one of his many opponents. But hey, that’s showbiz.

Looking desperately around for something to enthuse about, I will say that cinematographer Mila Orasmaa does a creditable job of capturing all the madness on film and that the music of Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä has a stirring Ennio Morricone quality that sometimes makes me feel I’m watching a Sergio Leone western. (Not that we’re anywhere near that exalted league.)

And then there’s the aforementioned coda, which – against all the odds – is poignant and strangely moving. Though in the case of Sisu: Road to Revenge, it does feel suspiciously like too little, too late.

3 stars

Philip Caveney