Euthanizer

Certainly original with a permutation of genres throughout that leaves this not yielding to any one definition. Dark yes, comedic yes, beautifully European. Some will cringe, some will laugh. Involves some human and animal trauma, be warned, though all of it justified in the films universe by the philosophy of a character. I wont be forgetting about this film, though I wish I did not watch it, pretty heavy and gnarly in places. Humor this dark, for me, is more dark than humorous. I must be getting old !! :)

Not a comfortable film. but an useful one. for simplicity. for dark traces. for a story about a man, his passion , options and life. a parable. or just a form of fairy tale. a film about the essence of humankind. and about choices. about pets, life and karma. and about curses . and the need of equilibrium. and about hate. against yourself. the best thing - maybe the performances. and the rhytm of story. and the details of plot. because it is a film about meanings. and answers. defining the most deep solitude. a support of reflection. about near basic things.

This was probably my first Finnish movie that I watched and it wasn't bad. It was a bit weird sometimes but the story is good enough to keep you entertained. It's a bit hard though, certainly if you're an animal lover like myself, and even if you know that no animals got hurt whilst making this movie, it still remains a bit hard to watch at times. The message of the movie is just karma, and karma is a bitch. Don't do to others what you don't want to happen to yourself, that's basically it. Matti Onnismaa, I never heared about him before, gave a good performance playing the euthanizer/vigilante. It's a bit dark, a bit slow, but that's how the character is so the movie portrays him perfectly. Not bad to watch once.

A small, confined and precisely executed movie about an emotionally scarred middle-aged man, who euthanizes pets - and judges their owners while doing it. It's sort of missing the point to call Armomurhaaja a thriller; at its core Armomurhaaja is a comedy, a very, very dark comedy about moral relativism and purism. Topics that are visited in movies way too rarely. Armomurhaaja is the bluntest examination on morality seen on the silver screen in ages. And a successful one at that. Actor Onnismaa's cantankerous, unrelenting, uncompromising, stubborn and anachronistic character demands to be taken seriously, because he will not sell out his values, and makes a convincing argument that his values - while not his methods - should be universal values.

The experienced Teemu Nikki is an original thinker, and knows how to make movies. Armomurhaaja looks about five times its budget (the IMDb estimated production cost is, if anything, an over-estimation) and is told in a sure-footed manner. It is also the best friend an animal, a pet, can have in the cinemaverse.

This is a dark short incursion into the dark side of the human nature. Veijo is a haunted older guy who takes upon himself to pay retribution to those who hurt animals, according to his own understanding of how karma works. He is fair and relentless, he doesn't make excuses and he often gives lesson to those who deserve them, in one way or another. He has his own moral code: you need to take accountability for the pain and hurt you caused others, and if you don't you must be obliged. He considers that those people who are aggressive they are lost, they don't know their place under the sun, they are lost and with no purpose or understanding of their lives, so they hurt others because they have no identity, no inner core, no resilience inside them. He takes the role of a euthanizer in his conflict with a lost soul, excellently played by Jari Virman, only to end up dealing with his own karma.

Later we find out that Veijo himself is a troubled soul, through the strain relationship with his father. Good circular script, with good lines and a strong character, well played by Matti Onnismaa.