Brian Viner Reviews Sisu: Violent but Exhilaratingly Bonkers

Sisu: Road To Revenge (15, 88 mins)

Verdict: Violent but exhilaratingly bonkers

Rating:

Nobody can ever convince me that predictive text-messaging doesn’t have a sense of humour.

When I texted a friend to ask if he wanted to come with me to a preview screening of Sisu: Road To Revenge, the word ‘Sisu’ came out as ‘Sissy’.

Well, never was there less of a sissy than Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), the tough-as-teak Finnish gold prospector and former army commando, whom we first met in the wildly entertaining, outrageously bloodthirsty 2022 film Sisu.

Then, he single-handedly wiped out more Nazis than a whole Allied tank division. This time, he turns his merciless eye on the Red Army, making Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Alan Carr as he embarks on a mission to avenge the massacre of his family.

It is now 1946, and Soviet soldiers have run amok in rural Finland, murdering and mutilating civilians. Among them are Aatami’s wife and two young sons, slaughtered on the orders of psychotically cruel Red Army officer Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang).

But at the start of Jalmari Helander’s English-language film – not that there’s much talking in it – Draganov is banged up in a Siberian prison. Richard Brake plays the KGB officer who orders his release –– on the condition that he finishes the Finn.

The man Aatami most wants to kill is the man best equipped to kill him.

And while all this is going on, our grizzled hero has dismantled the wooden family house plank by plank, and is looking for somewhere to rebuild it.

What duly unfolds is one-quarter Channel 4’s Grand Designs, three-quarters Mad Max: Fury Road – although perhaps what the film most resembles is an insanely violent Clint Eastwood revenge Western, shunted 5,000 miles or so east.

Like Clint, Aatami doesn’t say much. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all; just roars with anger now and then. And Lang’s Draganov, as it happens, bears more than a passing resemblance to Lee Van Cleef. Even the music sounds like Ennio Morricone might have composed it on a slightly iffy day.

The word ‘sisu’, we learn, means a kind of ‘white-knuckled form of courage’, which manifests when all hope is lost. Aatami is its apotheosis, defeating the odds time and again in ever-more cartoonish ways as each set of Soviet killers sent to crush him are eliminated. 

And not only does he somehow stay alive himself, so does his only companion, a Bedlington terrier given every reason to wish he was safely back in Bedlington.

Like the first film, it’s huge fun if you like this sort of thing, divided into the kind of chapters Quentin Tarantino might have devised, one of which is unambiguously titled ‘Motor Mayhem’.

Amid all the violence and gore, Road To Revenge is exhilaratingly, laugh-out-loud bonkers, with spectacular stunts involving planes, trains and automobiles… and tanks. It is certainly not for the squeamish. But nor is it to be taken seriously, except perhaps at the Ukrainian box office, where I have a hunch it will do very well indeed.

Wicked: For Good (PG, 138 mins)

Verdict: Brilliant sequel

Rating:

 Released a year ago, Wicked stormed box offices everywhere. The sequel, Wicked: For Good, deserves to do the same, though it is deeper and darker, as the relationship between Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) takes more twists and turns.

Jon M. Chu’s film begins, mesmerisingly, with the construction of the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. Meanwhile, the scheming Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his fellow conniver, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), have succeeded in their conspiracy to make Erivo’s good-hearted (but, unhelpfully, green-skinned) Elphaba a pariah, apparently hell-bent on the destruction of Oz. 

When an agitated, indignant Elphaba whizzes overhead spelling out the words ‘Our Wizard Lies’ in her broomstick’s vapour trail, Morrible uses her magic to change it to ‘Oz Dies’. That’s Panorama-level editing.

Glinda knows her old friend is being terribly maligned, but welcomes the accompanying campaign to make herself look like the embodiment of goodness. She has no magic powers, but plays along with the illusion that she does, floating about in a bubble that Morrible has created for her. A bubble of celebrity, if you like.

One doesn’t have to work too hard to find analogies to modern-day culture and society in Wicked: For Good.

Above all, Erivo and Grande are magnificent, worthy of all the acclaim that will doubtless be dished upon them. They handle a very funny fight scene beautifully, and both deliver their songs with proper star quality. 

For those who know the stage musical inside-out, there are one or two new ones to savour, and a few other departures that I mustn’t divulge here. It’s a very accomplished film.

Both movies are in cinemas now. A longer review of Wicked: For Good ran in Wednesday’s paper.