What a debut!

This was the remarkably assured feature debut of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, who was soon recognised as one of the brightest new talents of European cinema. He has made something of a speciality of updating literary classics, but this reworking of Dostoyevsky's harrowing novel is perhaps his most audacious.

Markku Toikka stars as Rahikainen, a suitably dissolute-looking latter-day Raskolnikov, whose descent into crime is laid firmly at the door of 1980s Finnish society. Not content with examining the dehumanising effects of Helsinki life, Kaurismaki aims a sharp eye at the nature of modern policing.

Dvd: Finnish language; subtitles in English, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian.