Sisu (2022) and Sisu: Road to Revenge Review

Sisu and Sisu: Road to Revenge are two of the most successful war action films of the 2020s.

Seen each twice. The 10 rating is what it earns. Jalmari Helander writing and directing both films. Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi, the unkillable former Finnish commando. Set during and after the Lapland War of 1944-1945 between Finland and Nazi Germany. The first film made approximately $17 million worldwide on a $7 million budget. The sequel expanded the scale and budget considerably.

Both films deliver Finnish war history through a revenge-action structural lens that no other production in the genre has matched.

Sisu is my kind of movie. An old man, a horse, a dog, a sack of gold and a whole SS detachment that picks the wrong prospector to rob. I grinned through most of the first film and kept grinning through the sequel. Helander made a war picture that knows how ridiculous it’s willing to get and then commits to every inch of it, and that commitment is why both films sit at a 10 for me.

The Setup (First Film)

Northern Finland. 1944. The Lapland War is in progress. Finland has signed an armistice with the Soviet Union and is now required to expel the German forces still occupying Finnish territory. The retreating Germans are conducting scorched-earth operations across Lapland, burning villages and destroying infrastructure as they withdraw. The civilian population is suffering catastrophic losses.

Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) is panning for gold in a remote stream. He’s alone with his horse and his dog. He discovers a major gold deposit. He bags the gold and begins traveling south toward the Finnish settled areas to convert the gold to cash. He’s approximately 60 years old. He looks like a tired old prospector.

A German SS detachment under SS-Obersturmführer Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie) encounters Korpi during their retreat. They notice his gold. They decide to take it. They underestimate the old man. The film documents what Korpi does to the SS detachment over approximately the next 24 hours. The detachment is destroyed. Korpi continues south with his gold and his prisoners (Finnish women the Germans had been holding).

The Korpi Backstory

The film provides minimal backstory for Korpi. The audience receives fragments. He served as a commando during the Winter War of 1939-1940. He killed many Soviets. The Germans called him “Koschei the Deathless” because Soviet attempts to kill him repeatedly failed. He lost his family during one of those Soviet attacks. He’s been alone in the wilderness for years. He prospects gold and lives off the land.

The backstory is folklore, not documented military history.

Koschei the Deathless is a figure from Russian and Slavic folklore who can’t be killed because his soul is hidden in a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare. Korpi’s nickname positions him in the folkloric tone. He’s not a regular soldier with regular capabilities. He’s something older and stranger that’s been turned loose on the Germans.

The choice is the film’s structural foundation. Korpi can’t be killed by conventional means in the film because the film has positioned him as folkloric instead of as conventional.

The audience accepts the impossibilities of his survival because the film has signaled that conventional rules don’t apply. The SS detachment members die. Korpi doesn’t, and the audience absorbs the difference as natural instead of as cheating.

The Koschei nickname is the smartest thing in the script, in my view.

The minute the film tells me the Soviets couldn’t kill this man, I stop keeping score on bullets and hangings and I’m free to enjoy the ride. A lesser action movie would have given Korpi a training montage and a medal. I’ll take the fairy tale every time.

The Sisu Concept

“Sisu” is a Finnish word that doesn’t translate directly into English. The closest English approximations are “grit,” “endurance,” “determination,” and “stoic courage.” The concept describes a Finnish form of resilience under conditions where giving up would be more rational than continuing. The Finnish historical experience has produced extensive cultural attention to the concept.

The film uses sisu as both title and structural argument.

Korpi survives the SS attacks because he refuses to give up. The Germans expect him to surrender, to negotiate, or to die. He does none of these things. He simply continues. Each German effort to kill him fails. Each German effort produces additional German casualties. The cumulative effect is the destruction of the entire SS detachment by a single old prospector who refused to give up his gold.

The Finnish historical context is essential. Finland fought the Soviet Union to a stalemate in the Winter War of 1939-1940 against impossible odds. The Continuation War of 1941-1944 saw Finland fight alongside Germany against the Soviet Union, then sign a separate peace and turn on Germany in the Lapland War of 1944-1945. The country survived as an independent democracy throughout the period. The Finnish national narrative emphasizes survival against superior force through sisu. The film is both action entertainment and cultural document.

The Combat

The combat sequences in Sisu work at high gore levels with practical effects and minimal CGI. Helander shot most of the violence practically using stunt performers, prosthetic effects, and choreographed action. The result looks bloody and physical instead of digital. Audiences who came up on CGI-heavy action films may find the practical violence unfamiliar. Audiences who appreciate practical effects work will find it exceptional.

The set pieces are inventive. Korpi survives being hanged. Korpi survives drowning in a peat bog. Korpi pulls a Stahlhelm helmet through a German soldier’s body with the chin strap. Korpi runs a Panzer tank’s tracks over his own body and survives. Korpi blows up a bridge with the Germans on it. Each sequence escalates from the previous one. The film maintains the escalation across the runtime without exhausting the audience.

The helmet and the chin strap is the moment this film convinced me.

It’s gross, it’s funny and it’s staged with a straight face, and the tank tracks sequence somehow tops it. I like that Helander keeps raising the bet without ever winking at the camera. The practical gore helps too. When a body hits the ground here it has weight, and I felt every one of them.

The choreography is also character work. Korpi doesn’t move like a typical action hero. He moves like an old man who has done this work before and knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s economical and patient. He waits for the Germans to commit mistakes and then exploits the mistakes. The combat is professional work with no theatrics. The audience receives the combat as the work of a specialist instead of as the work of a superhero.

The Jorma Tommila Performance

Jorma Tommila plays Korpi with minimal dialogue. The character doesn’t speak until the final scene of the first film’s 91 minutes. Most of the performance is physical. Tommila’s face tells the story. He communicates through expression, posture, and the deliberate quality of his movements. The audience receives the character through accumulated visual evidence instead of through spoken self-description.

Tommila was 64 during the production. He’s been working in Finnish cinema for decades. He’s the father of Onni Tommila, who has appeared in multiple Helander films including Rare Exports (2010) and Big Game (2014). The Helander-Tommila collaboration extends across multiple productions. Sisu is the most internationally successful entry in the collaboration.

The minimal dialogue is the performance’s distinguishing feature. Tommila could have delivered exposition about Korpi’s backstory. The screenplay chose not to provide that exposition. Tommila chose to play the silence as accumulated weight instead of as restraint. The audience reads the silence as the character’s actual personality instead of as a screenplay constraint. The choice works because Tommila commits to it completely.

Tommila is the reason I’d hand this film a 10 on his performance alone.

He doesn’t get a line until the last scene, and I never wanted one sooner. Watch his face while Korpi sets up a trap; it’s the patience of a man who has buried people before and expects to do it again. I can’t think of many action leads who’d have trusted the silence that far.

The Aksel Hennie Performance

Aksel Hennie plays SS-Obersturmführer Bruno Helldorf with suitable professional malevolence.

Helldorf is an experienced SS officer who has been conducting atrocities across Eastern Europe and is now conducting atrocities across Lapland. He underestimates Korpi initially because Korpi looks like a tired old prospector. He continues to underestimate Korpi after Korpi has killed heavy numbers of his men because Helldorf can’t accept that one old Finn could be capable of what is happening.

Hennie was 47 during filming. He has a solid Norwegian and international filmography including Headhunters (2011), Hercules (2014), Pioneer (2013), and other productions. The Helldorf role is his most internationally visible recent work. The performance avoids the cartoon-villain trap. Helldorf is competent within his structure. The structure is the problem. He’s a professional SS officer who has been doing this work for years. He’s not stupid. He’s just operating on assumptions that Korpi disproves.

The Korpi-Helldorf dynamic is the film’s central conflict. They’re not equals in the conventional sense.

Korpi is older, smaller, and apparently unarmed. Helldorf commands a full SS detachment with armored support. The audience knows from the opening that Korpi will win. The film documents how the winning works. Helldorf’s eventual recognition that he can’t win, and his late effort to escape with his life instead of completing his mission, is the performance’s clearest payoff. Hennie plays the recognition without overacting it.

The Helander Direction

Jalmari Helander came to Sisu after Rare Exports (2010) and Big Game (2014).

Both earlier films featured the Tommila family and worked in the action tone with serious production discipline on modest budgets. Sisu refines the approach. The production budget was approximately $7 million. The visual scale appears considerably larger because Helander used Finnish Lapland locations that no studio production could have replicated.

The visual style integrates Western cinema influences with Finnish landscape filmmaking. Helander has been open about his Sergio Leone influences. The framing, the patient build-ups, the willingness to hold on the protagonist’s face during extended moments of preparation are all recognizably Leone-derived. The combination with the Finnish setting and the Finnish historical content produces something neither Western nor purely Finnish. The hybrid is the film’s contribution to action cinema.

The Lapland locations are essential. The film was shot during winter in actual Finnish Lapland. The landscape provides production scale that constructed sets can’t replicate. The audience reads the environment as real because the environment is real. The choice cost the production in terms of difficulty (the Finnish winter is brutal for outdoor filming) and gained the production in terms of visual authority (no other location could have produced the same imagery).

The Sequel: Road to Revenge

Sisu: Road to Revenge expanded the scale of the original.

Stephen Lang and Richard Brake joined the cast. The production budget grew considerably. The runtime came in at approximately 89 minutes. The narrative shifted from the immediate post-WWII Lapland setting to 1946, when the KGB sends Draganov, the Red Army officer who killed Korpi’s family, to hunt him down.

The sequel deepens the Korpi backstory that the first film withheld.

The audience learns what happened to his family and why he’s been operating alone in the wilderness. The expanded backstory could have damaged the original’s careful folkloric framing. The sequel handles the expansion correctly, providing the backstory as accumulated evidence instead of as expository dump. It maintains the folkloric tone even as the historical details become clearer.

Stephen Lang’s casting as the senior Soviet antagonist was the sequel’s largest production choice. Lang is best known internationally for Avatar (2009) and other productions. His casting brought English-speaking audience recognition that the original film didn’t have. The choice was commercial but didn’t damage the film’s Finnish identity. Lang plays the Soviet character with suitable dramatic weight. The Korpi-Lang dynamic doesn’t replace the Korpi-Helldorf dynamic of the first film but expands the world the films are documenting.

Sequels that explain their legends usually kill them, and I expected the family backstory to do that here. It doesn’t. Lang gives the film a second heavyweight to push against, and I think keeping Korpi as silent as ever while the world around him fills in was the right call. The sequel deserves its place next to the original.

The Lapland War Context

The Lapland War is one of the least known phases of World War II for international audiences.

Finland had been allied with Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. The Moscow Armistice required Finland to expel German forces from Finnish territory by a set deadline. The retreating Germans conducted scorched-earth operations across Lapland, burning approximately 60% of buildings in the region and destroying infrastructure that took decades to rebuild.

Approximately 700 Finnish soldiers and 1,000 German soldiers were killed in the Lapland War.

The civilian costs were considerably higher. The displacement of the Lapland population, the destruction of homes, and the long-term economic damage shaped Finnish national consciousness for decades. The Sisu films draw on this historical context instead of on more familiar European war material.

The historical specificity is part of the films’ contribution to war cinema. American audiences have seen many films about the Western Front, the Pacific theater, and the Eastern Front. Few American audiences have seen films about Finnish military history.

The Sisu films introduce international audiences to Finnish historical material through accessible action structures. The cultural education embedded in the entertainment is one of the films’ lasting effects.

The Ending (First Film)

The first film closes with Korpi reaching a Finnish settled area. He’s killed all the SS detachment members who pursued him. He’s rescued the Finnish women the Germans had been holding. He converts his gold to cash. The film closes on him beginning to ride out of town with his gold money. He’s accomplished what he set out to accomplish.

The ending is the film’s clearest statement about its own argument. Korpi didn’t fight for ideology. He fought for his gold. The gold is his alone. He earned it through his own work in the wilderness. The Germans tried to take it. He killed them and kept it. The personal scale of the motivation is the film’s structural foundation. War films usually require larger motivations. Sisu refuses the larger motivation. The film is about a man defending what’s his.

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Is Sisu (2022) and Sisu: Road to Revenge as good as people say?

A 10, and I didn’t hesitate over it. Helander writes and directs both films, Tommila plays Korpi like a force of nature with a sore back, Hennie and Lang give him villains worth the trouble, and the Lapland War gives both films a history American films have never bothered with.

The folkloric framing lets me believe every impossible survival, and the practical violence makes me feel each one. I’d put both films in front of anyone who thinks war action ran out of ideas decades ago.

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