A year after he massacred a bunch of smug Nazis who tried to steal his golden nuggets, retired Finnish commando Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) drives over the newly drawn border with the Soviet Union in to the lost land of Karelia. It is revealed that he is one of the 420,000 Finns who fled Karelia when it was ceded to Russia in 1940, but that he intends to dismantle his old homestead, drive it back to free Finland, and rebuild in memory of his late wife and children.

Oh yes, about that… “Meanwhile, in Siberia” discredited Soviet death squad commander Igor Draganov (Stephen Frame) is sprung from prison and given a mission he can’t refuse. As he is the man whose atrocities drove Korpi to become the unstoppable “immortal” soldier, he should be the man to destroy him. Draganov sets off in pursuit of Korpi, who is doggedly driving a battered old truck across Karelia.

In my review of the first Sisu film, I speculated about the Mad Max: Fury Road and Indiana Jones image board that director Jalmari Helander might have in his office. This time, with Sisu 2: Road to Revenge, I would add a few choice moments from a bunch of other films, including William Friedkin’s truck-in-jeopardy movie Sorcerer, tips of the hat to the original Die Hard, and even Tom & Jerry. This over-the-top saga of Lumber in the Tundra sees Korpi dispatch an entire division of hapless Russian soldiers, with everything from his bare hands, to a handy missile, several useful poles, a bit of bent piping and a winch – I was the lone laugher in the Finnish cinema, while the locals around me seemed to be largely taking notes.

Some of the set-ups prove to be unnecessary dead ends – there’s a whole bit with a puukko knife that goes nowhere, and there are some odd anachronisms, like a Russian banquet that comprises crab sticks and Soave – and I felt that Helander missed a real trick by not featuring an onscreen massacre in which Korpi murders a bunch of Soviets with, say, a hammer and a sickle.

Helander also returns to what I’ve previously called his “Finland of the mind”, not only in terms of redressed Estonian locations, but of the very idea of Karelia as a liminal, thinning fairyland – a place that was once home, but is now seen slowly drowning in red weed. As I have mentioned before on this blog, 12% of the population of Finland were Karelian refugees in the 1940s, and that has translated in modern times to, at a rough guess, one in four of everybody’s grandparents. There is an overwhelming sense of melancholy and loss in Korpi’s return to his former homestead, and a gritty determination to repatriate it far in excess of the passion with which he went after his Nazi tormenters in the first film.

In a moving sequence of a talkoot, Korpi finds himself unexpectedly and briefly among friends. As an immigrant who has also been accepted by Finland after my homeland sold me out, I seemed to be the lone crier in the cinema, too.

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Short History of Finland. Sisu is what keeps him going back to try terrible Finnish Asian-fusion buffets. Sisu 2: Road to Revenge is released in the UK later this month.