在这部八响致命枪声剧情片中,A poor farmer tries to get by, but fails. Blood is shed, not out of malice, but simple desperation. A raw exposé on human degradation and deprivation. A work of Zola-esque violence and grandeur, shown here in its ultra-rare, 5h+ original version. The greatest Finnish film ever.
Peter von Bagh was always joking that Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation should handle the restoration of this Zola-esque monument, as it was obviously made in a Third World country. And true, it's difficult to imagine that the down-trodden, poverty-stricken, backwoods hole we see here is situated somewhere in 1960s Finland.
The real-life story on which Eight Deadly Shots is informally based happened in 1969. In a moment of sheer hopelessness, a certain Tauno Veikko Pasanen shoots four police officers. Tauno is called Pasi here and played by scenario-writer Niskanen himself. Pasi ekes out a meagre living for himself and his family. Times grow increasingly harder. One thing slowly leads to another. In the end, there's blood. A raw, grim, uncompromising, unrelenting, unforgiving and non-consoling masterpiece which will be shown in its five-hour-plus original version. A very, very rare opportunity!
Small-farmer Pasi shoots four policemen who have come to arrest him for raged drunkenness. The movie is a flashback examining the events that finally lead to the tragic shooting. As time goes by, Pasi sinks deeper into poverty, gets into trouble with police and tax officials, all while family arguments grow more and more serious. Based on a real story.
