"Sisu: Road to Revenge" (Guardian 19/11/25)

Sisu: Road to Revenge ****

Dir: Jalmari Helander. With: Jorma Tommila, Stephen Lang, Richard Brake, Sandy E. Scott. 88 mins. Cert: 15

2022’s Sisu had the look of a one-hit wonder. A Finnish indie pitting a grizzled prospector against an entire platoon of Nazis, it found writer-director Jalmari Helander heeding the lessons of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road: principally that convoluted plotting stirs no man, and that there is cinematic value in going pedal-to-the-metal along a single, straight narrative line. That profitable sleeper now yields this choice continuation, which somehow feels more expansive while still clocking in under 90 minutes. Having seen off the SS, indomitable hero Aatami (Jorma Tommila) gains both a tragic backstory and a new, vicious post-War foe in wily James Cameron fave Stephen Lang, playing the tremendously named Red Army butcher Ivan Draganov.

Again, the economy of Helander’s approach proves striking and thrilling. No unnecessary obstacles have been placed between the audience and a good time at the movies: we get one scene of Aatami dismantling his family home beam by beam and one scene of Draganov being sprung from jail before the pair intersect on the backroads of Soviet-occupied Finland. Cutting to the chase grants Helander time to craft setpieces in which Aatami outthinks and outflanks the Red Army’s might; in this respect, Sisu 2 is a more-of-the-same sequel. The good news is that what’s repeated remains terrific: punchy, old-school stuntwork, crisply uncluttered cutting, and varied, inventive baddie-splattering, from the moment Aatami deploys one of those beams to take down a jetfighter.

Revelling in his homeland’s gorgeous, sundappled scenery, Helander manoeuvres with the boyish enthusiasm of kids playing war games in the woods: you half-expect someone’s mum to call everybody in for tea. Yes, it’s cartoonish – look sharp for one regrettably misplaced mousetrap – but that comic-strip simplicity serves as a rebuke to our knottier blockbusters. You don’t need excessive CGI or exposition with effects as potently compelling as Tommila’s bloodied, defiant face, while the writing gathers grace notes at pace: those beams become a memento, then a liferaft, then a new beginning. Like his protagonist, Helander holds onto the essential, torches the rest, and goes harder and faster for it. His film should raise huge cheers in Kyiv – and, indeed, everywhere else it plays.

Sisu: Road to Revenge opens in selected cinemas from tomorrow.