Making action films in Finland was an impossible dream: 'Sisu: Road to Revenge' director

Mumbai, Nov 28 (PTI) Filmmaker Jalmari Helander says his love for action cinema goes back to his childhood but pursuing that passion felt impossible while growing up in Finland, a country with no tradition of big-budget action filmmaking.

Helander, who has come out with his new movie "Sisu: Road to Revenge", said he used to watch action movies, especially the James Bond movies, with his father as a child. He was inspired so much that he had made up his mind on becoming an action director by the age of 11.

But Finland, with a small population of around five million, had no significant tradition of producing action cinema because large-scale action required substantial budgets.

"I think people in India also like action films. For me, I think it started in my childhood, when I was a kid watching James Bond films with my dad. When I was 11-year-old, I was certain that I would do action films when I grew up.

"But that's kind of an impossible dream being a kid in Finland (because) we had zero action films in Finland. There were only five million people living in Finland, basically you don't have money to do big action films. But I'm happy to be here now (making action films),” Helander told PTI in an interview.

The filmmaker started his feature film career with the 2010 hit “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale”, and followed it up with 2014's “Big Game” and “Sisu” in 2022.

“Sisu: Road to Revenge” is the sequel to the “Sisu” and sees actor Jorma Tommila reprising his role as Aatami Korpi, a reclusive former commando who embodies sisu, a Finnish spirit of unbreakable grit and resilience.

In the sequel, Korpi has settled into a quieter life after securing his gold but peace is short-lived as a new group of dangerous criminals and corrupt operators threaten his hard-earned freedom.

Making an action film like “Sisu: Road to Revenge”, comes with its own set of challenges, said Helander.

“There were a lot of difficult action set pieces, especially the big explosions, because it's like you have one take and then you have to plan it for days. Basically, you’ve one shooting day when you only get the explosion, it's very time consuming, but it's nice when it happens,” he said.

One of the standout moments from “Sisu: Road to Revenge” is the ‘Motor Mayhem chapter’, a sequence Helander said was quite difficult to shoot.

“I don't remember how many days we were shooting it, maybe ten or something or even more. But that was really time consuming, you’ve a lot of moving vehicles and cameras moving also, and that takes a lot of planning to have the timing right. And that was probably the hardest,” he said.

The 49-year-old director, who is also a fan of Sylvester Stallone’s “Rambo” and Arnold Schwarzenegger-led “Terminator” franchises, is now excitedly working on his next feature.

The project serves as a prequel to the “Rambo” franchise and is currently titled "John Rambo". Actor Noah Centineo is set to step into the shoes of Sylvester Stallone, who played the iconic character in five films -- "First Blood" (1982), "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985), "Rambo III" (1988), "Rambo" (2008), and "Rambo: Last Blood" (2019).

“I’m in Bangkok in pre-production with the new ‘Rambo’ film and I’m pretty happy about that. It's going to be my take on what I like about ‘Rambo’ franchise, combined with the style I like to do it. So, I'm just trying my best and I hope it works," Helander said about the project. PTI KKP RB RB RB