Sisu: Road to Revenge Is a Brutal Blast of Pure Action

Sisu: Road to Revenge

★ ★ ★ ★

Sisu: Road to Revenge is the sequel to the 2022 word-of-mouth hit Sisu. In the first film, Aatami (Jorma Tommila) has just left World War II and is mining near a riverbed with a pickaxe. He finds a massive vein of gold, breaks it into chunks and puts it in his satchels. He gets on his horse and begins the ride back to his home in former Swiss territory. He happens across a small Nazi caravan. They stop him, search him and steal his gold.

Sisu is a Finnish word that describes an unshakable level of resilience and courage in the face of dire adversity—so dire, all hope is lost. Aatami is the human embodiment of sisu—a one-man wrecking crew who already has a reputation for extreme carnage. He proceeds to track down the Nazis to get his gold back. And he does so in fantastic, bloody, brutal fashion.

Jorma Tommila as Aatami
© 2025 Sony Pictures / Screen Gems

In this film, he has returned to what’s left of his home in the old Swiss territory. His family had been tortured and killed by Russian soldiers. Aatami dismantles the empty house and stacks the wood in a large truck. He secures it and heads out.

Meanwhile, Soviet Red Army Commander Yeagor Dragunov (Stephen Lang) is released from a Siberian prison by a KGB officer (Richard Brake). While it’s not clear why Yeagor is in prison, the officer knows he’s responsible for the slaughter of Aatami’s family. Yeagor is offered freedom in exchange for hunting down Aatami. Yeagor sets out with a group of killers to hunt him down.

Stephen Lang as Yeagor
© 2025 Sony Pictures / Screen Gems

Aatami isn’t far into his journey when Yeagor catches up with him. From here, Aatami’s journey to peacefully rebuild his family home elsewhere is met with violence, mayhem and a massive body count.

The violence is cartoonishly extreme, over-the-top and bloody as hell. And it’s a heckuva lot of fun to watch. The style shares similarities with films like 300 and Kill Bill: Volume 1. The action scenes mirror the impossible, near-inhuman, determination Aatami has to get his home to the new Swiss border and kill Yeagor and his Russian squad. It may be unrealistic at an absurd level, but so is Aatami.

Tommila has very little dialogue, if any. He doesn’t need it. From the moment he steps into frame, it’s obvious he’s a man of action. Tommila’s non-verbal cues, facial expressions and fight choreography are all the dialogue he needs. It works on every level.

Stephen Lang as Yeagor
© 2025 Sony Pictures / Screen Gems

There’s a scene where Aatami approaches a Russian blockade, complete with anti-tank obstacles called dragon’s teeth—pyramid-type concrete blocks. Aatami rigs the back of his tank with dynamite to catapult and flip it over the blockade.

Ridiculous? Yes. And very entertaining.

Jorma Tommila as Aatami
© 2025 Sony Pictures / Screen Gems

But that sums up Sisu: Road to Revenge. It’s brilliantly over-the-top—as if the film itself winks at you saying, “yeah, we know—and you love it.”

I did love this movie. It makes use of every frame of its 90-minute runtime. It’s action-packed, brutal and a fantastic action film. Its beauty is in its simplistic brutality. The filmmakers don’t make it easy on Aatami. They throw every impossible situation at him, and he takes each painful hit, slice and bullet wound with an unwavering determination to get revenge and get his house across the border where it belongs. Even with the most brutal wound, he just rubs some dirt in it and carries on. If that’s what sisu means, count me in for round three.