Written by SISU Movie Trailer
SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE Review
by Anders Torbjorn
World of Martial Arts Television says:
“Unstoppable battered loner in Zatoichi, Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai, Tarantino, Spaghetti Finland Killing Soviet Scum”
I didn’t expect poetry. I didn’t expect philosophy. I expected violence, grit, and a mean streak wide enough to drive a tank through.
What I got was all that—and something harder to put a name to. Something stubborn. Something Finnish. Something that doesn’t ask permission.
They call it sisu. Not courage. Not toughness. Not bravado. It’s what’s left when you’ve run out of all three and keep moving anyway.
That’s the soul of this film.
Jorma Tommila stars in SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE.
SISU: Road to Revenge doesn’t waste time shaking your hand. It hits you with a shovel, drags you across frozen ground, and dares you to get back up. This is a revenge film stripped to the bone, a pulp myth told with the confidence of a director who knows exactly what kind of blood he wants on the snow—and why.
The story is simple. Simple like a loaded gun. A lone man collecting his stolen house. Soviet Russian Death Squads who picked the wrong man to stop. If that sounds familiar, that’s the point. This isn’t about twists. It’s about inevitability. You watch the bad men make bad choices, and you know where it’s heading. The pleasure isn’t in surprise—it’s in watching gravity do its work.
Our protagonist, Aatami Korpi, is the kind of man noir stories were built for. Not talkative. Not charming. Not interested in explaining himself. He doesn’t say a word, not now, not at all, his face says everything. He does not monologue. He doesn’t negotiate. He just keeps going. A man shaped by war, hollowed out by it, and sharpened into something that no longer fits neatly into the world.
He’s less a character than a force of nature. A blizzard with a pickaxe.
And here’s where SISU earns its keep: the film understands restraint. In an age where action movies scream for attention, this one growls. Dialogue is sparse. Exposition is minimal. The camera lingers where it needs to and moves when it should. Violence isn’t decorative—it’s functional. Brutal, ugly, and often darkly funny in the way only true desperation can be.
That humor matters. Without it, the film would drown in its own severity. Instead, it winks at you from the shadows. Not a joke—more like a smirk. The kind that says, yeah, this is ridiculous, but stay with me. And you do.
Jorma Tommila stars in SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE.
The villains are exactly what they should be: arrogant, cruel, convinced the world bends for them. The film doesn’t waste energy humanizing them. History already wrote their epitaph. What matters is watching their certainty crack as they realize the man they’re hunting doesn’t feel pain the way they do. Doesn’t fear death the way they do. Doesn’t stop.
This is where the noir heart of the film beats strongest. In classic detective stories, the hero survives not because he’s stronger, but because he’s emptier. He’s already lost everything that can be taken from him. SISU taps into that same existential fuel. Korpi isn’t chasing justice. He isn’t even chasing revenge in the conventional sense. He’s reclaiming something internal. A line in the dirt. A refusal.
Cinematically, the film is a knockout. The Finnish wilderness is shot like a crime scene God forgot to clean up. Endless white. Open skies that offer no mercy. Every frame feels cold enough to bite. The landscapes dwarf the characters, reminding you how small men are when stripped of ideology and uniforms. It’s just flesh versus environment. Will versus entropy.
The action set pieces are inventive without being indulgent. Each escalation feels earned. The film doesn’t top itself by getting louder—it gets meaner. More personal. More desperate. By the time the final act rolls around, you’re not watching to see if Korpi survives. You’re watching to see what it costs him to keep going. That’s noir. Survival is never free.
What really surprised me, though, was the film’s discipline. It knows when to stop. It doesn’t overstay its welcome or dilute its themes with unnecessary subplots. There’s no forced romance. No sentimental backstory spelled out in flashbacks. The past exists only in scars, glances, and the way Korpi moves through the world like it already betrayed him once.
That trust in the audience is refreshing. The film assumes you’re paying attention. That you can read faces. That silence can say more than words. In a market bloated with over-explanation, SISU respects your intelligence—and then tests your stomach.
And let’s talk about tone. This thing walks a tightrope between grindhouse excess and arthouse control. It could have tipped into parody. It doesn’t. It could have become self-serious. It resists. Instead, it finds a narrow path where brutality becomes allegory. Where survival itself is the statement.
At its core, SISU: Road to Revenge is about endurance. Not the Instagram kind. The kind that doesn’t look good in photos. The kind that leaves you limping, bleeding, and still standing because stopping isn’t an option anymore. It’s a film about what happens when a man refuses to die—not because he wants to live, but because the world hasn’t earned his corpse yet.
That’s a hard thing to sell. Harder to pull off. This film pulls it off by committing fully to its premise and never blinking.
Is it for everyone? No. It’s violent. It’s bleak. It’s unapologetic. If you’re looking for comfort, look elsewhere. But if you appreciate cinema that knows exactly what it is—and executes with precision—this one’s worth your time.
I appreciate stories where morality isn’t clean, and survival is the only currency that matters. SISU fits that lineage. The usual, painful, lonely road. One man walking it. A question hanging in the air: how much can one person endure before something gives?
In SISU, the answer is simple.
More than you think.
When the credits rolled, I didn’t feel exhilarated. I felt satisfied. Like I’d watched a promise kept. The film didn’t try to change the world. It just told its story, sharp and cold and honest. And, that’s enough.
I turned off the screen. The city was still there. Same old shadows. Same old noise. But for a while, I sat with that word—sisu. Not hope. Not redemption. Just resolve.
Some men have it. Some don’t.
This one did.
“Every martial artist talks about being indomitable in the face of overwhelming odds, this film is it, this is SISU”
Returning to the house where his family was brutally murdered during the war, SISU: Road to Revenge follows “the man who refuses to die” (Jorma Tommila) as he dismantles his former home, loads it on a truck, and drives away, determined to rebuild it somewhere safe in their honour. When the Red Army commander who killed his family (Stephen Lang) comes back hellbent on finishing the job, a relentless, eye-popping cross-country chase ensues – a fight to the death, full of unbelievable action set pieces.
Rated 15 and runs for 1 hour and 28 minutes.
Availibility
Sisu: Road to Revenge is available to Buy or Rent at home now
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The post SISU: ROAD to REVENGE Movie Review first appeared on World of Martial Arts | WOMA.