Armomurhaaja
**½/****
written and directed by Teemu Nikki
by Bill Chambers Veijo (Matti Onnismaa) kills pets for people who can’t afford to have them euthanized by a vet: Gas for the small ones, a bullet for the larger varieties. He feigns a mystical connection with animals to exact a steep price, though, shaming owners for being the potential cause of their furry friend’s misery, like the young woman he chides for keeping her cat locked up in a tiny apartment. This doesn’t stop some of his clients from using him as a glorified hitman, and when his dying father’s nurse (Hannamaija Nikander) brings him a dog she “found” (i.e., liberated from its post outside a building) to contrive a reason to see him do his thing, his principles seem to take a backseat to indulging her kink. (“What did you see?” she asks him after he communes with the canine. “Enough,” he replies. For the record, I think he’s highly intuitive but not any kind of psychic.) Nevertheless, Veijo’s sanctimony and desire to see animals shown mercy and humanity–when a veterinarian (Pihla Penttinen) questions the ‘rightness’ of his methods, he accuses her of prioritizing the maintenance of her lifestyle over the welfare of her patients–go a long way towards making palatable the endless stream of euthanasia (which, if it’s any consolation, happens offscreen), and Onnismaa, a veteran character actor in his first lead role, summons real moral authority in playing him. Euthanizer finds a surprising amount of story in the cloistered milieu of a shop that’s not bound to get a lot of repeat business, with Veijo earning the enmity of a small-time criminal whose dog he spares (and adopts), starting a sadomasochistic fling with the nurse, and torturing his father (Heikki Nousiainen) for past misdeeds by refusing to let him go gently into the night. It’s ultimately the ruthless triangulation of a character who becomes suicidal over his own frailties when his righteous sense of justice eventually turns inwards. I think I’ve been starved for something like this, that presents a protagonist both unconventional and insightfully-developed–you get these kinds of antiheroes on TV but rarely in film, where the path to catharsis doesn’t have to be agonizingly drawn out. (You get them even more rarely in American film, unless they’re draped in capes.) But, not being possessed of that weather-beaten Finnish irony, I felt at a distinct disadvantage when confronted with the movie’s grimy sense of humour, which is often borderline if not outright misogynistic. Some part of me couldn’t wait to forget Euthanizer, and the film, for all the ghoulish residue of its subject matter, hasn’t put up much of a fight. Programme: Contemporary World Cinema
