Rendel 2017

In the city of Mikkeli, Finland, a company called VALA has developed a vaccine that looks successful on the surface but has never undergone proper testing. Behind VALA’s gleaming façade, a criminal organization steers the operation, led by Pekka Erola, a figure who wields power with quiet menace. His son, Rotikka, stands among the group’s most violent enforcers, loyal to the cause and ruthless in pursuit of anyone who threatens it. A shadowy, all-black figure begins to strike VALA and its men with startling precision, and Rotikka notices a chilling pattern: each victim bears the name “Rendel” etched into their bodies.

In a series of flashbacks, we meet Rämö, a family man and financial director who seems ordinary at first. He and his wife celebrate Father’s Day with a biker jacket that becomes a symbol of his identity, a token of belonging that stands in stark contrast to the brutal world he’s pulled into. The peace is fragile. When he refuses to invest in a venture brokered by a VALA worker named Kurikka, the pressure from the top grows louder and Rämö’s position at his job dissolves. The consequences ripple outward, leaving him adrift and scrambling for work as the future grows increasingly uncertain.

Digging through VALA’s paperwork, Rämö uncovers a devastating truth: the vaccine is tar-based, designed to bond to skin permanently, and its deployment has already claimed numerous lives. The shock of this revelation collides with the fear that he will become a whistleblower, exposed and punished for speaking out. Pekka Erola senses the threat, and with calculated resolve, he dispatches Rotikka and Lahtaaja to silence Rämö and wipe out his family. The danger is intimate and personal, forcing Rämö to confront the possibility that his family’s safety might depend on his silence—and his complicity.

The assault comes to a brutal crescendo: Rämö’s wife and daughter are killed, and he is left for dead, his body battered and his spirit tested. But fate offers a grim second chance, as he survives and illegally sews tar into his own skin to form a mask. With the biker jacket his family cherished and a pair of gloves as his new armor, the man becomes something new—one who moves unseen through the night as a dark avenger. A mysterious ally named Marla arrives to offer occasional aid, a specter who seems to know more than she reveals.

As Erola’s empire stretches upward, the higher-ups decide to hire a cadre of foreign mercenaries to crush the rising threat. The lineup is formidable: Mike, Radek, Stacy, Julia, and Jimmy. At first, this mercenary group proves too much for the masked vigilante, overpowering him in several encounters, and [Julia] pays the ultimate price. The clash shifts into a broader war, with both sides digging in and the stakes climbing higher by the day.

Meanwhile, a local reporter, Niina Heikkinen, begins to pry VALA’s operations loose from the shadows, intent on exposing the truth behind the company’s sanitized public image. Rotikka steals her notes and takes Niina captive, hoping to silence the story for good. But the vigilante arrives just in time to rescue Niina, and the two of them push back against the mercenaries and the powerful figures who pull their strings, fighting through a web of danger and deceit.

The battle builds to a brutal confrontation with [Lahtaaja], where the line between reality and illusion begins to blur. It is revealed that [Marla] is, in fact, a construct of Rendel’s own psyche—the product of his trauma and imagination—while the real struggle rages on outside his head. In a shocking twist, the vigilante tumbles into a fresh storm of pain as the truth lands: he was the one who was stabbed, not Marla. Regaining his footing, the dark avenger presses on with renewed focus and a merciless resolve, ending the confrontation with Lahtaaja using a brutal, decisive strike.

The escalated conflict reaches a breaking point as Erola’s higher-ups acknowledge that the mission has spiraled beyond their control. Rotikka, who has never felt his father’s love or trust, is given a direct order and turns on his own blood, shooting Pekka Erola. The city’s weary savior then confronts Rotikka in the rain, closing Rotikka’s car trunk on his hands before delivering a final, cruel mercy: syringes of the tar-based vaccine injected into Rotikka’s neck, killing him. As the downpour subsides, Niina steps back into the light, and the vigilante surveys the heart of Mikkeli, aware that the battle is not over and that the higher powers who pulled the strings will likely seek revenge.

In the end, the film leaves us with a chilling sense of unfinished business—a city still under threat, a lone avenger haunted by the past, and a shadowy network that continues to loom just beyond the city’s edges. The lines between justice and vengeance blur, the cost of truth weighs heavily, and the question remains: who really holds the power in a place where a single, masked man can fracture a corrupt empire?