Why Sisu: Road to Revenge is the best action movie of 2025

Sisu was the best action movie of 2023, and 2025 sequel Sisu: Road to Revenge is as good, if not better, so we spoke to the movie’s writer-director and stars to find out how they made lightning strike twice.

‘Sisu’ is a kind of courage that can’t be explained, and in the movies it’s embodied by Aatami, a former Finnish commando whose family were brutally killed by Russians during WWII, and who has turned himself into a one-man death squad in response.

The first Sisu film had him killing scores of Nazis, while this times it’s Russians, and specifically the man who murdered his loved ones. Meaning Aatami is showing even less mercy in Road to Revenge.

We wrote in our Sisu 2 review that the movie: “delivers wall-to-wall action and consistently creative kills, while the hero’s personal journey carries a powerful message about the futility of war.” We also spoke to Sisu mastermind Jalmari Helander, and his stars Jorma Tommila and Stephen Lang, about going bigger and better second time around.

Coming up with the right idea for Sisu 2

Writer-director Jalmari Helander says he only agreed to Sisu 2 when the right idea popped into his head, and that concerned home. In post-war Finland, Aatami discovers that his house is now on Russian land, so being a determined man, he disassembles the building, loads it onto a truck, and heads for Finnish soil.

“The idea of him getting his house back from across the border was so good,” says Helander. “It’s emotional and immediately starts to create action. You need to move your house – it’s hard anyway, and if people try to stop you, it’s even harder.

“That’s my playground – I’ve created that world, that tone, and that style, so I’m really comfortable being there because I have no rules, I can do what the f*ck I want, and that feels good.”

Then it’s about crafting death and destruction, and Helander says before writing Sisu 2, he feared that the ideas wouldn’t arrive. “But they keep coming,” he says. “I’m just good at thinking how people should die. It’s a weird thing to be good at, but that’s how my brain works.”

Finding inspiration in James Bond and Indiana Jones

Sisu: Road to Revenge features a chase – called Motorcycle Mayhem – that proved to be the toughest to shoot, and which we compared to the action in Mad Max: Fury Road.

But Helander says that he found inspiration in other movies: “I haven’t thought much about Fury Road myself, but it probably exists there. It’s more like I was watching truck chases in Indiana Jones films, and old James Bond movies. I like that style – the playfulness.”

As for his favorite action scene in Sisu 2, Helander lists two different moments: “I like the plane sequence and I also like the train sequence a lot.”

But then he ultimately picks a less bombastic moments from the very end (which we won’t spoil here): “The last scene of the film is what I’m most proud of.”

Casting the perfect villain

KGB agent Yeagor Dragunov is Sisu 2’s antagonist, who carried out missions behind enemy lines during the war, burned down entire villages, and chopped up women and children… including Aatami’s own family. Making him a bad guy who’s as terrifying as he is evil, and meaning that casting was key.

“I was originally thinking of a much younger guy when I wrote it,” admits Helander. “But when the idea came to ask Stephen Lang, I was absolutely on board because I thought it was a great idea. It just clicked.”

Helander puts that clicking to Lang being like Jorma Tommila, revealing that: “They have similar qualities – hard-looking guys, like old geezers. There was something really good about it, and I think it worked perfectly.”

Lang jumped at the chance to play the nemesis of ‘the man who refuses to die,’ saying: “I can’t accept the fact that just because he refuses to die doesn’t mean he can’t be killed, right?”

As for who Dragunov is, Lang explains that: “he’s a very formidable, intimidating, defended, uncaring, cold, manipulative bastard, is what he is. That’s my kind-of cold, objective read on him. Subjectively, he’s got a beating heart. He likes what he likes. His needs are limited. He’s a hard guy. He’s been hardened and embittered by the life he has led.”

While he also thinks the movie works because Aatami and Dragunov are two sides of the same coin: “They share a lot of characteristics. I think they’re both somewhat impenetrable. They’re both formidable. You know that expression between a rock and a hard place? Well, I would say that if Aatami is the rock, then Igor is the hard place, or vice versa, and they’re destined to to face off.”

Why Sisu: Road to Revenge is a timely movie

Sony Pictures

Lang also believes that the social and political themes at play in Sisu: Road to Revenge make it the right movie for this particular time.

“I think that it deals with the themes of home, of moving, of being bereft, of tremendous loss, and trying to move forward against all odds with optimism. I think that that could be a very definition of what’s going on all over the world right now.

“Certainly here in America, even as forces try to drag us backwards, I think that there’s still heart and hope that are manifest in so many of our citizens, and I think that that Aatami represents that kind of indomitable hope against all odds.

“The concept of ‘sisu,’ which one will always understand is a uniquely Finnish concept… is just a refusal to give in to what one knows is absolute negativity… a refusal to give in to despair. That theme is very present in the world today, it seems to me. And in that sense, I think that it is very, very, very relevant indeed.”

While we’ll leave the last words to star Jorma Tommila, who believes Road to Revenge is even more pertinent that its predecessor: “The theme of Sisu 2 is family, home and fatherland, which is more important than gold. Sisu 2 is more timely and emotional in its story.”

Sisu: Road to Revenge hits screens on November 21, 2025, while you can head here for our list of best action movies ever.