After the end of World War II, Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) crosses the border from Finland into what is now USSR territory, to strip his family home and bring it back into his own country. But the Soviet authorities see his visit as a chance for vengeance…
Jean-Luc Godard said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Finnish director Jalmari Helander respectfully disagrees: he needs no girls at all, as long as he has a lot of guns and a wildly inventive approach to construction materials. At least, we can assume as much from this visceral action sequel, which sees its leathery hero go absolutely nuclear on a global superpower.
2022’s Sisu told a tale of one gnarled Finn, Jorma Tommila’s gold prospector Aatami, demolishing a battalion of Nazis with extreme prejudice in the dying days of World War II. A sliver of backstory established that he’d previously gone one-man-army against the Red Army because they slaughtered his family. Now, the even more heavily scarred hero crosses into USSR territory — annexed from Finland immediately after the War — on a personal mission to his old homestead. His arrival prompts the Soviet powers to open a prison in Siberia and release Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang), held there for his part in that long-ago massacre of Aatami’s family. Draganov, he’s told, must go and kill Aatami and bury the legend that he helped create, avenging the honour of the regime.
80-or-so minutes of non-stop mayhem.
Draganov has the sense to swiftly enlist a few hundred disposable goons to accompany him. He’ll need them, because Aatami’s lethal way with a found object puts even John Wick to shame. Anyone can kill a guy with a pencil; it takes real invention to crash a plane with a plank of wood. Every object on screen here except, perhaps, some of the grass becomes an instrument of death at some point. It’s all big old iron trucks and leftover war munitions, carpentry tools and Cold War weapons. And Aatami is fluent in all of them, even if he never says a word.
Helander’s filmmaking is as lean as his hero: there are quick moments of scene-setting at the beginning and at the end, and 80-or-so minutes in-between of non-stop mayhem. He builds character into the action: Aatami needs to get his cargo home as well as himself, and that determination tells you more about the man than any number of soliloquys. As he sets his jaw and enters the fray against the latest challenger, you can be sure that there will be blood.
Finnish him! Gore-soaked and unbelievably bloody, this will make you wince, gasp and cheer for the little guy. Another authoritarian regime is in for a bad day, and that’s a lovely thing to watch.