Apologists for the Soviet Union frequently claim that it was Josef Stalin’s ostensibly benevolent and virtuous regime that ultimately toppled the Third Reich, winning World War II for the Allies. Such socialist-aligned revisionists are grossly mistaken, both historically and morally.

Filmmaker Jalmari Helander, in Sisu: Road to Revenge, his sequel to the 2022 sleeper hit Sisu, plants us in the grim fringes of Soviet-controlled territory in the immediate aftermath of the war and paints an appropriately merciless portrait of this torturous landscape and its pitiless potentates.

Jorma Tommila reprises his role as the reclusive Finnish war veteran Aatami Korpi. A cross between Rambo and John Wick, he is depicted as the living embodiment of the Finnish word sisu, explained in the film as “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination.” In the first film, that determination was focused on protecting a bag of gold from marauding Nazis. Here, the stakes are more intimate and far more tragic.

In a ruse to remain neutral during the war, Finland ceded territory to the Soviet Union. That political concession provides the narrative impetus for the sequel. Upon returning from his Nazi-massacring excursion in the first film,........

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