Rööperi (Hellsinki)
2009
***
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Samuli Edelmann, Peter Franzén, Pihla Viitala, Kari Hietalahti, Juha Veijonen, Jasper Pääkkönen, Kristo Salminen, Pekka Valkeejärvi
Punavuori (aka Rööperi) used to be a shady area of Helsinki, which was rife with bootlegging and prostitution. This Finnish gangster drama takes real-life people from a book of interviews by Harri Nykänen and Tom Sjöberg and weaves a fictionalised story of the rise and fall of three career criminals from 1966 to 1979. Tomppa is a pragmatic businessman who struggles to go legitimate, Kari is a simpleton who cannot take care of himself, and Krisu lives from hand to mouth, which becomes his downfall when he succumbs to drugs. The characters are not terribly original but they are carefully developed and wonderfully played by Edelmann, Hietalahti and Franzén, respectively. The film is at its best in the first hour, when the boys climb up in the underworld, but the narrative begins to lose its rhythm when they go their separate ways. And the story goes on too long.
