Sisu: Road to Revenge

I must admit that I’d entirely forgotten about “Sisu” (2022) until I sat down to watch this, and then it all came flooding back. Maybe that is because this isn’t so very different. He (Jorma Tommila) has returned from his native Finland to his former home in what is now Soviet occupied Karelia to collect it. Yep, he is going to dismantle the wooden home he built for his murdered family and relocate it across the border. The Soviets still remember the carnage he caused last time around, and so release his erstwhile tormentor “Dragunov” (Stephen Lang) from a gulag with instructions to terminate him and earn his freedom (and lots of roubles). What now ensues is like a militaristic game of snakes and ladders as “Sisu” faces soldiers, armoured cars, fighter planes and even a train as he tries to stay alive long enough to make it home with his logs. Now I don’t think there is even the slightest hint of jeopardy here, indeed it pretty much screams the continuining adventures of “Sisu” from the start, but it’s really good fun if you like mindless violence, a good old-fashioned baddie straight out of an Ian Fleming novel and loads of combat scenes that would easily have killed him, and just about everyone else, a hundred times over. Ever seen anyone somersault a tank? There is a bit of dialogue, but it’s entirely unnecessary as the bullets fly and the blood flows, and we build to a denouement that almost makes you cry! This production has seen considerable effort gone into it, there’s gore galore and I did quite enjoy it for ninety minutes.

"Sisu: Road to Revenge" is a polished case of "style over substance" with a predictable, anti-Russian message. All the trappings are there. Excellent sets, spectacular cinamatography, at times entertaining, if over the top action and capable acting, from the cast. What's missing is anything that truly looks like a intelligently rendered back story. What made the first "Rambo" film work so well, putting the intense action aside for a moment, was a truly heartfelt back story, with a character, who, at least for one film had personal depth, that was wholly relatable, wholly "human". This film aspires in this direction, early on and looks like its could get there but quickly devolves, into what feels a lot like a "Call of Duty" style, computer game, where you kill everything in sight, until there is very little left, not only to see but, in this case, to empathise with. The director and writers, try to reignite the emotional component, of this film, at the end, with the house building scene but by then, any emotional potential, has long since departed. In summary, this film is a platform, for a mega-ton of over the top, at times viceral, gritty, action but that's as far as it gets. Looking beyond the superficial death and destruction, it's disappointlingly shallow. An okay watch.

Ridiculously over-the-top. Insultingly impossible action. Glorious. Look past all of the insane levels of destruction and carnage and you will see the special heart of this story. A man is going to take his family home. It's that simple. Along the way he encounters some.... hurdles that need to be jumped. So he jumps them. Fantastic experience.