Jar City

SINOPSIS

After his ill-fated excursion into American noir with the muddled A Little Trip to Heaven, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur (101 Reykjavik) is back on home turf and on surer ground with this accomplished crime drama. Based on a novel by Arnaldur Indridason, it's a multi-layered story whose central theme is the murder of a reclusive old man. Ingvar E Sigurdsson stars as the grumpy detective who discovers a link to a series of crimes from years earlier, while at the same time repairing his damaged relationship with his junkie daughter (Agusta Eva Erlensdottir). Although the movie doesn't quite shake off the feeling of a small-scale TV drama - with his natty line in cardigans Sigurdsson could be a distant relative of Inspector Frost - Kormakur's economical direction and the strikingly bleak Icelandic vistas lift this out of the ordinary.