Set in the aftermath of World War II, Sisu: Road to Revenge maps the relentless journey of ex-commando Aatami Korpi as he dismantles his old family house and hauls it across hostile terrain in search of safety and redemption. With his past tragedy still a raw wound, Korpi finds himself targeted once again by the very man who destroyed his world, making the film a brutal yet cathartic clash of survival, vengeance and honour. Directed by Jalmari Helander, the action-packed sequel thrusts our hero into a merciless fight spanning icy wilderness and war-scarred landscapes, showcasing not only raw physical grit but an unshakable will to rebuild what was taken. With stakes that feel deeply personal and a tone that refuses to soften, this one is for viewers who crave bold, unfiltered action that packs emotional weight.
Overview
In the aftermath of World War II, hardened ex-commando Aatami Korpi returns to the place where his family was brutally murdered and dismantles his old home plank by plank, loading it onto a truck with the aim of rebuilding it in a safer land in their memory. But his quiet mission triggers a brutal confrontation when the man responsible for his family’s death, the feared Red Army commander Igor Draganov, resurfaces, determined to finish what he started. What follows is a relentless cross-country chase through war-scarred landscapes — as Korpi fights not just for survival, but to honor and reclaim what was lost. With minimal dialogue and maximum physicality, the film trades subtlety for raw momentum, tapping into an old-school action ethos where the hero’s journey is measured in wreckage, confrontation and sheer will.
Cast and Crew
Director: Jalmari Helander
The film is directed by Jalmari Helander, who also serves as the screenwriter for this sequel. Helander returns after the original 2022 film to steer the story of Aatami Korpi into fresher territory, blending war-movie grit with high-octane revenge action. With Helander at the helm, the production leans heavily into practical stunts, minimal dialogue, and a lean runtime, keeping pace tight and the tone unapologetic. His dual role as writer-director ensures a consistent vision across story, character and spectacle. The result is a film that feels intentional in its aesthetic and narrative delivery.
Lead Actor: Jorma Tommila
The lead actor is Jorma Tommila, reprising his role as Aatami Korpi, a former Finnish commando turned gold prospector turned one-man vengeance machine. Tommila’s performance is marked by minimal spoken lines, where physicality, stoicism and sustained presence carry the weight of the narrative. His embodiment of Korpi anchors the story, providing the emotional core even as the film prioritises kinetic action sequences. By carrying over a familiar character, the film builds on existing audience investment while pushing him into sharper conflict. Tommila’s return ensures continuity and gives the sequel a strong central pillar to build around.
Lead Actress
While the cast listing for Sisu: Road to Revenge does not prominently identify a designated “lead actress,” the focus of the story remains firmly on Aatami Korpi and his duel with Igor Draganov. No major female lead is credited in the primary cast list. This absence underscores the film’s deliberate positioning as a brutal, masculine revenge action saga—one centred on war-scarred men, landscapes and conflicts. If a female character does feature, she is neither billed as a principal star nor highlighted in standard production materials.
Supporting Cast
Among the key supporting cast members are Stephen Lang (as Igor Draganov) and Richard Brake (in a KGB officer role). Stephen Lang’s turn as the ruthless Red Army commander presents the main antagonist and raises the stakes for Korpi’s mission of vengeance. Richard Brake adds further menace and bureaucratic threat as part of the Soviet apparatus tracking Korpi across the border. Additional supporting cast include Einar Haraldsson, Jaakko Hutchings, Ergo Küppas and Anton Klink in various soldier and border-guard roles. Together, the ensemble builds a credible network of opposition and elevates the hero’s challenge through layered conflicts.
Music Composer
The musical score is composed by Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä, who return as the film’s composers. Their work brings a war-era, atmospheric sound to the film, underpinning the tension, isolation and revenge motif that dominate the narrative. The choice of dual composers supports the film’s multinational production context—bridging Finnish setting with English-language execution. While the film emphasises visual action over musical overtures, the score reinforces pacing, tone and thematic resonance. For your blog, you might highlight how the music complements rather than overshadows the physical action on screen.
Production Company
The production companies involved are Stage 6 Films, Subzero Film Entertainment and Good Chaos. Stage 6 Films (a unit of Sony) handles the international side, while Subzero and Good Chaos anchor the Finnish-led production. This collaborative setup reflects the film’s hybrid identity: Finnish director and setting, global distribution and English dialogue. The budget $12.2 million indicates a modestly scaled but ambitious action film by Finnish standards. Noting the production companies in your blog reinforces the film’s cross-border credentials and marketing angle.
Run Time: 1 Hour 29 Minutes
The official running time is 1 h 29 min for most markets. Its compact runtime supports a lean, no-fluff narrative style more common to Western exploitation or retro-action films than epic war sagas. This brisk pace may appeal to younger viewers or action-fans who favour fast-moving plots over extended exposition. For your blog, you might emphasise how this length reflects the director’s commitment to keeping things tight, direct and maximal in impact. In short: it doesn’t drag — it hits hard and leaves quickly.
Budget and Box Office
The production budget for Sisu: Road to Revenge was approximately $12.2 million. This places it among the more ambitious Finnish-led productions, reflecting the scale and action ambitions of the sequel. As of the latest confirmed figures, the film’s reported box office gross stood at around $2.6 million worldwide. While still early in its release cycle and in select territories, this total currently trails the production cost, influencing how the film’s financial return will be assessed in its full release window.
Story
The film opens in 1946, in the aftermath of war-torn Finland and the redrawing of borders. Our protagonist, Aatami Korpi — formerly a Finnish Army commando turned gold-prospector — returns to the site of his family’s slaughter. His home in Karelia, where his family was brutally murdered during wartime, stands in Soviet-occupied territory. His mission: to dismantle the house plank by plank, load it onto a truck, and transport it out of harm’s way so he can rebuild it somewhere safe in their memory. As he begins this heavy, symbolic journey, his past catches up with him: the very man responsible for his family’s death, the Soviet commander Igor Draganov, is released from captivity by KGB agents and assigned to track Korpi down and finish the job.
From there, the story becomes a relentless cross-country chase across shifting terrains and perilous conditions. Korpi’s simple act of tribute — moving his house — turns into a full-scale survival odyssey, as Soviet forces mobilize motorcycles, planes, bombs and armored vehicles to intercept him. Along the way Korpi uses his home’s planks as both burden and weapon, improvising tactics in life-or-death confrontations while silently bearing the weight of what he’s carrying. The narrative escalates when Korpi is captured, tortured aboard a train bound for Siberia, and learns the full scope of Draganov’s atrocities against his family. Revived by the truth, Korpi breaks free, fights his way through the train, activates a missile onboard, and turns the weapon against the antagonist. With Draganov dead and the Soviets thwarted, Korpi completes his mission: he crosses the border to Finnish soil, begins to rebuild his house, and stands amidst the rebuilding with silent stoicism — his vengeance done, his tribute in motion.
Overall, the story combines raw personal vengeance, symbolic acts of reclamation (the dismantled house), and war-era geopolitics (post-WWII Soviet occupation) into a lean, high-stakes forward motion. Korpi’s journey isn’t about introspection so much as action-driven catharsis: reclaiming his home, avenging his family, and transporting both physical and emotional weight across a battlefield turned borderland. The result is a story of one man’s refusal to die, his home’s literal and metaphorical transport, and a brutal reckoning with a foe unleashed.
Review
From the opening sequence, director Jalmari Helander wastes no time in plunging us back into the brutal, merciless world established in the original, with Jorma Tommila returning as Aatami Korpi. The film builds on the “one man versus everyone” template and cranks it up in scale and audacity. Critics have noted its “punchy, old-school stunt work” and a lean plot that keeps the action front-and-centre. The practical effects, trackable camera work, and string-of-set-pieces mentality make the experience visceral and relentless.
Tommila’s performance stands out largely because he does very little in terms of dialogue—his stoic face, scarred body and physical presence carry almost all of the emotional weight. This amplifies the film’s minimalistic approach: the story is pared down to survival, revenge and movement. The antagonist, played by Stephen Lang as Igor Draganov, brings enough menace to give Korpi’s journey stakes beyond spectacle. Reviews praise how the film “builds on it instead of just repeating the same barely-controlled chaos”.
Visually and stylistically, the film leans heavily into absurdity without losing grip—there are moments so over-the-top they verge on cartoony, yet the craftsmanship behind each sequence grounds them. One review described a sequence involving a wooden beam used to take down a jet, and while it sounds ridiculous, it works within the film’s own logic. The tone oscillates between grim war-revenge and “let-the-violence-own-the-moment” exhilaration, which may divide viewers: some will love it, others may find its silliness too broad.
On the pacing front, the film excels for most of its runtime, hitting hard and fast with minimal downtime, which makes for a tenser viewing experience. However, this elevated pace and single-minded path mean there’s little room for character development or thematic layering. Several critiques point out that by the end, the repetition of kill-sequences and chase beats threatens to dull the impact. If you’re seeking a story that evolves or surprises narratively, you may find yourself wanting.
Finally, from a broader standpoint the film serves as an exemplar of how to do a sequel in this genre: it retains the core of what made the first film compelling (its visceral physicality, lean story) while elevating one or two elements (scope, antagonist, set-pieces). It doesn’t tether itself with over-complication, which is both a strength and a limitation. For fans of unapologetic, hyper-violent action films, this hits the mark. For those looking for more subtlety or emotional payoff, it might feel like a case of “more of the same.”
Aatami Korpi: The Rise of an Unstoppable Action Icon
What makes Sisu: Road to Revenge stand out is the way it transforms Aatami Korpi into a new-age action icon without relying on long speeches, exaggerated hero worship, or romantic subplots. He is a character built entirely through action — a man whose pain, resilience and purpose are revealed only through what he does, not what he says. His mission to carry his house across war-scarred terrain becomes more than logistics; it becomes an act of defiance, identity and memory. In a cinematic world often packed with superheroes and CGI-powered violence, Korpi’s raw, grounded brutality brings back the old-school “unstoppable everyman” archetype with surprising emotional precision.
The movie also taps into a deeper mythos of survival and legacy, where the hero isn’t driven by wealth, fame or saving the world — but by preserving a piece of his past that no enemy could destroy. Every confrontation he wins is less about triumph and more about refusing to surrender what remains of his life and family. As audiences follow his march across borders, bodies and history itself, the film turns a revenge story into something akin to a legend — a frontier tale of a man who becomes myth not by speaking loudly, but by refusing to fall. This thematic edge is one of the biggest reasons the character continues to resonate strongly with viewers long after the credits roll.
Conclusion
Sisu: Road to Revenge proves that a film doesn’t need long dialogue, emotional monologues or complex storytelling to make an impact — sometimes, a raw and unbreakable will is enough. Aatami Korpi’s journey is driven by memory, loss and duty, and the movie stays laser-focused on that purpose from start to finish. Every scene reinforces the idea that vengeance isn’t just violence but a fight to reclaim something deeply personal, and that makes the action feel meaningful even when it’s wild and exaggerated.
Despite its simplicity, the film leaves a surprisingly lasting impression. It gives fans exactly what they want — a relentless hero, a brutal villain and nonstop survival stakes — while delivering an atmosphere that lingers long after the final shot. Whether viewers admire the emotional symbolism or simply enjoy the blood-pumping action, Sisu: Road to Revenge succeeds in cementing itself as a memorable entry in modern action cinema and a worthy continuation of Korpi’s legend.