Hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European cinema,” Mikko Niskanen’s magnum opus Eight Deadly Shots (1972) begins with these words of caution: “Booze was the root of all evil in our family.” That foreboding sentence carries the somberness and the finality of an epitaph, but this monument of Finnish cinema is more than a cautionary...