Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (Rikos ja rangaistus, 1983) is Aki Kaurismäki's Finnish crime drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The director moves Dostoevsky's novel to Helsinki in the early 1980s. In place of the student Raskolnikov stands Antti Rahikainen, a young man who walked out of law school after a car killed his fiancée.

Now he works the line at a slaughterhouse, and at night he tracks down the driver responsible. One evening he steps into the man's flat and shoots him. The act is cold, almost clerical — but a woman named Eva happens to witness it. Rather than go to the police, she becomes a quiet, persistent conscience at his shoulder, pressing him toward a single choice: turn yourself in.

This was Kaurismäki's first feature, and his trademark is already fully formed — clipped dialogue, motionless faces, flat northern light under which guilt shows plainer than any confession. He doesn't illustrate Dostoevsky so much as rebuild him in a colder key. Stream Crime and Punishment (1983) online on iFILM.