Sisu: Road to Revenge

Novelist Cormac McCarthy explored the idea that violence can be regenerative and redemptive. In Sisu: Road to Revenge, Helander has painted that concept on the movie screen 20 feet tall, near death, and dripping with gore. By becoming inhumane, Aatami seeks to recover his humanity. Never before will you have felt so cleansed by such brutality.

Road to Revenge is everything you could want from a rough-and-tumble, tough-as-nails action movie. 'Sisu' was even more of it, but only by a matter of degrees.

The good news is that it remains terrific: punchy, old-school stunt work, crisply uncluttered cutting, and varied, inventive baddie-splattering from the moment Aatami deploys one of those beams to take down a jet fighter.

There's something to be missed from the first due to the predictability of his path in this iteration, but there are enough surprises and novelties (usually violent) to provoke delight and get adrenaline pumping.

There are moments when the sequel nearly overdoes it, when Helander’s thirst for blood threatens to overpower the film. Yet, in its simplicity, it finds a steady rhythm that quickens gradually, peaks, and resets. It isn’t profound or enlightening, but for 89 minutes, it rides the fury road confidently, flipping tanks and unleashing hell along the way.

It’s gloriously, audaciously silly, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time.

I laughed at a few of the more audacious butcherings, but that was early on. The narrative settles into a slog in the middle acts and no pull-out-the-stops train ride finale could drag it out of the mud.

This movie is a gem. Main protag and main antagonist do a superb job. Slow burn straight up manly man film. Go see it!

Incredible - in the bad way. I liked the original, it had some believability. Since the sequel scored higher, I expected more. I got a whole lot more. Bigger action pieces, but they were unbelievable. Big ideas, but just completely ridiculous. At some point, you just think "nothing has to make sense" and you emotionally divest in the character and the movie.

After the first film, when the hero (Jorma Tommila) defeated hundreds of ****, he returns to his home in Russian-occupied Finland where his wife and children were brutally murdered. He loads up a truck with his home’s disassembled timber and heads back to safety in his country. Meanwhile, the Communists are out to stop him. This excerpt from my original review also applies this time (my review): “He becomes a sort of John Wick, violently killing his opposition, while remaining virtually unscathed. Even when he gets wounded and worse, he manages to emerge to continue his quest. This attitude is the approximate translation of the title, “courage and determination.” The only reason to see this film is for the brutal acts of death, which are sometimes cleverly dispatched.” The big difference this time is that the stunts are absurdly over-the-top, jumping the shark as it goes. They’re still brutal, vicious and quickly dispatched, but he’s overcoming odds that only a superhero could endure. If you can accept the absurdity of it all, there are lots of bloody encounters. BTW, he does make it to the “Finnish” line.

A series of poor stunts loosely strung together as if it represents a story. Even worse than the first in this series of films, the acting is mostly terrible and the attempt to stylise the film fails horribly. I definitely wouldn’t bother to watch it again.

You wouldn’t realize this film is a sequel given there’s hardly any plot. From what I’ve learned in the first film he kills ****. All well and good to killl a bunch ****. Nevermind, that **** were allies of the Finns in WWII A bit different when the contrived plot asks us to enjoy 90 minutes of gruesome slaughter of war heroes who had just spent 10 millions of their comrades lives to defeat 80% of the **** Army. Maybe we should start asking ourselves if the people that are being turned into meat goo as a kind of absurd slapstick are people we should be mindlessly enjoying the deaths of since the dozens of rank and file soldiers were war heroes that defeated the worst enemy the world has ever known at great personal cost. Obviously the plot is historical nonsense, but even fiction shouldn’t be so cavalier about the lives of the people it’s telling us are worth turning into bloody sludge at the hands **** who for someone reason was killing the **** his country was allied with while also being an enemy of the country that was killing the most ****.