A version of this review was published to coincide with the world premiere of the film Sisu: Road of Revenge at Fantastic Fest in September 2025. It has been updated for the film's theatrical release.
Many years ago, a friend of mine who was addicted to Wire was a favorite icebreaker question. In the show's second season, crime legend Omar (Michael K. Williams) lures wily drug addict and police informer Bubbles (Andre Royo) into a trap. leave the radiator outdoorsknowing that Babs wouldn't be able to resist the piece of scrap metal he was selling. A friend of mine asked people, “What would your enemies use to set the perfect trap for you?” I'm watching Sisu: Road of Revengecontinued by Jalmari Helander his stripped-down 2022 revenge film Contentbrought me back to this issue because the film feels like bait for fans of the genre in its purest, uncut form. Post a screenshot showing Road of Revenge outdoors, and you might trap more action fans than you know what to do with.
Like the original Content, Road of Revenge there is little dialogue and a lot of righteous, completely justified bloodshed. ContentIn the film, set in 1944, grizzled Finnish army veteran Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila, the writer-director's son-in-law) fights his way through scores of Nazis after they steal bags of gold nuggets he painstakingly obtained. Road of Revenge finds Aatami in 1946, returning to his village home in the part of Finland that had fallen to the USSR. He painstakingly dismantles his house and attempts to transport materials across the new border into unoccupied Finland, but faces resistance from the brutal Red Army officer Igor Draganov (genre follower And villain from the recurring movie Avatar Stephen Lang), who was ordered to hunt down and kill the terrifying figure who divided the Red Army back in Three Month Winter War.
Draganov personally oversaw a brutal purge of Finnish locals that resulted in the murder of Aatami's wife and children, giving Aatami a personal reason to fight back. But this extra touch hardly seems necessary; Road of Revenge everything you need is already there. There is a simple man with a sentimental, complicated goal. We know he's a good guy, mainly because he has a pet dog and a worn, beloved photo of himself with his dead family, and also because some very bad people fear and hate him. He wants to go home, but home no longer exists for him, so he has to fix it.
Very bad people pursue Aatami in escalating waves of video game style, naturally dividing the film into six chapters where he fights them off, taking increasingly excruciating damage en route to the inevitable boss fight. Draganov gives a speech. Aatami doesn't speak at all. So many things explode in surprising and exciting ways.
There is some kind of outright absurdity in many of them. Road of Revenge. This is partly due to the incredibly extensive damage Aatami takes along the way without capitulating. (“Sisu,” we are told in expository text at the beginning of both films, is an untranslatable Finnish ideal, “a gritty form of courage and unimaginable determination.”) Part of this has to do with the inventive but unlikely ways he uses to destroy the people who are pursuing him. He has a truck and fists. They have weapons, explosives, motorcycles, body armor, planes filled with bombs, and much more.
And on top of that, Aatami's goal of trying to move the house across miles of occupied territory is quixotic and a little ridiculous. Stopping the Soviets from getting anything that's important to him is obviously important to Aatami, but the image of him trying to protect a creaky old truck full of lumber never fails to be a little silly. Even Lang's mustache game seems campy.
But the absolute minimalism of the plot gives Sisu: Road of Revenge a force that goes back to films like the first John WickJohn Rambo in First blood (open inspiration for Helandr, who has now signed a contract to direct a Rambo prequel), and to such classics as Point blank in front of them. “I like to keep things as simple as possible,” Helander. told Polygon in an interview at Fantastic Fest in Austinwhere the film had its world premiere in front of a crowd of screaming fans of the genre.
As in ContentThere are no nuanced character work, no shades of gray, thoughtful explorations of trauma or conflicting metaphors about modern society. There is a hero and a bunch of mostly anonymous villains who represent the most irrationally repressive and evil side of humanity. Villains die in cathartic ways, often unlikely but always satisfying. Nothing here is designed to linger after the adrenaline rush when a speeding motorcycle gets a grenade shoved into its tire and improbably flies into the air and explodes. This is not a film that you can take home with you and discuss later. It's a raw, dirty, often grotesque version of a sugar rush.
This also means that this film is only intended for a specific audience. Viewers more interested in character development than spectacle will find it boring; viewers who prefer the realism of well-trained bodies in complex, choreographed athletic stunts will be disappointed. This is fine. Sisu: Road of Revenge it is not bait for their personal traps. This movie does one thing and does it well, using techniques that reach almost cartoonish proportions. And this is clear in every dark, bloody, bloodthirsty scene that Helander and Tommila know. exactly Who are they making this film for?
Sisu: Road of Revenge is now playing in cinemas.
