Jar City

A bad tempered detective investigates a murder of an old man with an interest in porn and a young genetics researcher and his wife sit by the bedside of their dying 5 year old. You get an initial feeling that this is going no-where nice. You'd be right, murder, rape, dead children, drug addicts and grungy houses this is not the view of Iceland that the tourist bureau would like you to see. Couple this with the Icelandic films I saw last year and I'm left with the opinion that Icelandic film makers don't care too much for their country's image. But on the plus side there are some great aerial shots of the countryside.

While the film is a serious crime drama there are some moments of humour, such as the young detective knocking on doors of old women and asking if they had been raped 30 years earlier. The one that got best audience reaction was when the detective in charge eats his take-home dinner of sheep's head starting with the eye-ball.

All in all, a good solid, well acted, crime drama with a couple of feel-good moments.

Ian's rating 3/5