I am an audience of one at a late afternoon “preview” matinee of “Sisu 2,” aka “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” the sequel to the savage sleeper hit by Finnish carnage Jalmari Helander.

Do the locals know something I don’t? Or are the good folks in “The Last Capital of the Confederacy” showing their red ball cap displeasure at a movie about mowing down Russians by staying home?

I’m guessing it’s the fact that Screen Gems’ marketing didn’t spend enough to move the needle even a centimeter that dampened enthusiasm, as nobody knows about it.

That’s no big deal, because this sequel is inferior in pretty much every way to the original “Sisu,” which came out of nowhere back in 2023 and which takes its title from a Finnish word that more of less means unfettered rage. It’s not on a par with Helander’s “Rare Exports” Santa-horror splatter film either. He’s due for a misstep. Here it is.

“Road to Revenge” brings back our non-speaking, unstoppable and unkillable Finnish commando Korpi (Jorma Tommila), this time out to haul the pieces to his house across the Russian border after the end of World War II.

When your anti-hero is “unstoppable” and “unkillable,” that lowers the stakes. A lot.

Throw in feeble pacing and thus no urgency to its story of driving, shooting, stabbing and missle-launching his way through legions of belligerant Russians, fresh from their triumph in “The Great Patriotic War,” and you’ve got a thriller whose only creative bits are random moments of Russian-mutilating and murdering.

Remember, the vodka/borscht-folk and their dictator sided with the Nazis at the beginning of WWII, only to F-around and find out you can never trust a Nazi. And the Russians further earned their history’s bad-guys status by invading Finland at the start of the war, and paying dearly for their miscalculation, at least for a time.

The Soviet Russians annexed Finnish territory at war’s end, and that’s where Korpi lived. So he’s got his passport and his battered, oversized military truck and he’s aiming to move the logs of his old homestead, where his family was slaughtered, to a new location across the new border.

Ivan doesn’t want him to get away with it.

The stages of his quest are broken into superfluous “chapters” like “Old Enemies,” “Motor Mayhem:” and “Incoming.” The dialogue, almost all of it by a Russian tormentor (Stephen Lang) who commanded the troops who failed to finish off the Finn in the first film, is every bit as pointless.

“Unleash Hell,” like they haven’t already. “Keep your eyes open,” the most worthless command cliche of them all. And “Look at me,” served up as if he isn’t looking at you.

Duels against armored commandos on motorcycles (!?), airborne fighter bombers and the like ensue. Our hero takes another licking and keeps on ticking. The Russians? Let the body count commence, Comrades!

I laughed at a few of the more audacious butcherings, but that was early on. The narrative settles into a slog in the middle acts and no pull-out-the-stops train ride finale could drag it out of the mud.

Rating: R, graphic violence, pretty much start to finish, profanity

Cast: Jorma Tommila, Richard Brake and Stephen Lang.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jalmari Helander. A Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:29

Wicked: For Good Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, and Michelle Yeoh.

Director: Jon M. Chu

What’s Good: Wicked: For Good is definitely a showpiece when it comes to production values, and so, every single frame is beautiful to look at and the ultimate Wizard of Oz experience when it comes to visuals.

What’s Bad: The film is slower than the first, and it feels, especially when the new songs don’t hit like the ones in the previous instalment ,and dialogue feels like a lot of filler.

Loo Break: Anywhere in the first act, as the film moves so slowly that you can probably go and come back and not miss anything.

Watch or Not?: If you loved the first one, then yes, you need to see this and close the cycle.

Language: English (with subtitles).

Available On: Theaters

Runtime: 137 Minutes

User Rating:

Opening:

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Script Analysis

Wicked: For Good is a solid film, there is no doubt about that, you just have to look at the powerful visuals, and the entire production value, but the script might be the weakest aspect of the film, especially when it comes to structure and dialogue, which affects the pacing, making the first two acts of this musical epic feel like it could do with a couple more drafts to make the story tighter, and the flow a lot more natural.

As it is, the first two acts move a snail’s pace, and the songs simply don’t match the quality and catchiness of the songs in the first two acts of the first film, here, the songs feel like they are there just to make the film longer, and it is hard to remember one that is simply memorable enough to sing along. Fans of the original musical will probably have a lot more fun with this aspect of the film, but as a newcomer, I did feel a drop in quality on the musical side.

The dialogue also does a lot of damage to the film, as it feels like everything is delivered in two or three lines that are too long, when it could have been conveyed in a simpler and more efficient way. It just doesn’t work, and while the actors do their best, the material doesn’t hold up. Nevertheless, some jokes here and there truly land, and the film does tell a compelling, complete story, which is a lot more than many other films do today.

The third act also feels quite rushed, and the connections to the original Wizard of Oz film, and the characters from that story deserved a lot more, because they are so legendary and iconic, that for some reason this movie feels like it should just move away from them as fast as it can, hurting the overall impact of the story, and the character growth.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Star Performance

Cynthia Erivo is quite solid in here, and she is plotwise, the main character, but let’s be real, this is the Ariana Grande show, who basically steals the show in every single scenes she is in, not only with her powerful voice but also with her solid acting abilities, she just has it, when it comes to presence, delivery and charisma.

The rest of the cast is quite good. Bailey does some terrifying things in the film and effectively creates all the darkness it needs, while Goldblum’s Oz is just right – nothing to talk about, but definitely his performance, along with the rest from all the other actors, doesn’t hurt the film; it elevates it.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: Direction, Music

Jon M. Chu started as a relatively standard director. Still, he has definitely graduated to the big leagues with these two films, as the scale of everything just goes out of the window when it comes to the visuals and the camera’s placement, which is always in the perfect spot to show it. Really, the world-building that Chu and his team have created here is outstanding.

The music, as we said before isn’t as good or memorable as the first film which really hurts the experience because this is a musical and I thought the best was being safe for last in the song department, of course, it will be a matter of taste, as it is everything but this is definitely one of the biggest negative points for the film. Nevertheless, the performers are truly going out of their way to create something extraordinary, so there is really nothing to criticize regarding the actors, dancers and singers themselves.

Wicked: For Good Movie Review: The Last Word

Wicked: For Good closes this adventure in a solid manner, although the overall package feels weaker than the first film, which is disappointing. However, Jon. M. Chu, his team, and his cast demonstrate that they truly care about the project, and it shows on the screen as the film finally delivers on being entertaining, grandiose, and visually stunning. It could have been better, but what is there is truly remarkable.

Wicked: For Good Trailer

Wicked: For Good releases on 21 November, 2025.

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Must Read: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Movie Review: The Strange Case Of A Sequel That Nobody Wanted & Many Had Already Forgotten!

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Near the end of Wicked: For Good, we at last get the song that gives this second part of the Broadway musical adaptation its sub-title. It’s a duet that serves as the emotional climax in the relationship between its two principal protagonists, the now-exiled-from-Oz “wicked witch” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and the tool-of-the-Wizard “good witch” Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera). The lyrics highlight the impact a profound relationship can have on you—“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better / But because I knew you / I have been changed for good”—and director Jon M. Chu directs it beautifully, offering reverse cuts in which the actors nail the emotional complexity between these two frenemies. It’s a lovely, tear-jerking scene—all the more notable because it’s one of the few things that’s vaguely recognizable from the source material.

The decision to break Wicked into two parts was always going to be fraught, because it essentially meant figuring out how to turn a two-and-a-half hour theatrical experience into two two-and-a-half hour movies. And the challenge facing the second movie was going to be even more difficult, since nearly every one of the show’s best, catchiest songs was found before intermission. Like the Scarecrow, Wicked: For Good was going to have to be stuffed with additional material just to keep it moving—and it 100 percent feels like it.

That’s a damned shame, because the story about scapegoating, propaganda and deciding whether or not to side with a manipulative regime certainly feels resonant, and clearly has been punched up to emphasize that idea. It’s there in one of the new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz, “No Place Like Home,” in which Elphaba sings “How do I love this place / That’s never loved me,” which accompanies the persecuted animals escaping via a literal underground road. It’s still there in the pointedly cynical lyrics sung by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) in “Wonderful” about “great man” mythologies. Wicked was always a tale about moral choices and twisting truth for power, and that idea hasn’t been stripped away.

It has, however, been seriously diluted. Filling out the running time involves packing in a lot of CGI busy-ness, from the opening attack by Elphaba on the enslaved-animal-driven construction of the Yellow Brick Road to the stampede of critters disrupting the wedding between Glinda and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox add a flashback back-story for Glinda involving her lack of magical talents, intended to make her focus on superficiality more sympathetic, and providing context for the second of the two new songs, “Girl in the Bubble”—a nice opportunity for performance moments for Grande-Butera, but otherwise utterly unnecessary to the character arc. On stage, Wicked’s second act was a ruthlessly efficient integration of familiar elements from The Wizard of Oz driving toward its resolution, even if that meant the songs were mostly narratively functional rather than irresistibly memorable. Wicked: For Good drags out every beat, making its considerably darker tone compared to the first half feel like even more of a slog.

There’s another moment near the end, one that almost exactly echoes the way the stage version presents the famous melting of the Wicked Witch as a shadow-play. The visual restraint of it is striking, in juxtaposition with the way Chu seems determined to make everything else about his Oz as big and gaudy as possible. Financially, it’s undoubtedly going to be a brilliant creative decision to get two Wicked box-office hits out of this story, even if that meant giving audiences a year-long intermission between acts one and two that blunts some of the callbacks in both the dialogue and the relationships. Everything was there in the original musical to make for a single great movie. I can say it wasn’t changed for the better. Because they knew how, it has been changed for greed.