Iceland has historically been seen as one of the most pristine, idealistic places on Earth. The island's economic collapse in 2007-2008 threw water on this perception, but it rebounded by prosecuting the bankers and essentially bailing out the people. It's safe to say that the country has regained its positive stereotype.Not if you watch Olaf de Fleur's "Stóra planið" ("The Higher Force" in English), though. This movie depicts a debt collector. I'm talking one real lowlife. I've seen a number of movies from the Scandinavian countries - yes, I count Iceland in that number - which depict people's lives as lowly and miserable, or depict nasty individuals. This stands in sharp contrast to the stereotype of the Nordic countries as immaculate utopias. I suppose that there's bound to be something gritty below the surface.About half the movie is in Icelandic, half in English, with a little bit of Chinese. Most of the cast won't be recognizable to US audiences, but Michael Imperioli of "The Sopranos" plays a supporting role. I guess that I recommend the movie as an alternate look at Iceland, beyond the stories of the economic meltdown and the images of geothermal springs. Not a great movie, but OK in a pinch. Ísland lifa að eilífu!

I like this film very much. I had no expectations because Icelandic films are not that good or great. It's a good comedy but the drama in it is kinda a weird, but I somehow liked the film overall. I does not seem to have a strong direction of where it's going but in a weird way in enchanted my and my friends. At least we laughed most of the time.I think Erpur and Benedikt were extremely good in their roles, but we all love Petur and his work. I like the music very much, it comes from all over the world and is not as dark as usual Icelandic film music is. The twist with the school teacher being a crime boss is very funny.Also the Wolfi character is adorable.Cool, lovely film.

It's not every day that I see as unusual film as this here in Iceland. It's something guaranteed to be different for anyone who sees it. The pointlessness of being seems to be the core theme of this film based on a book by an Icelandic author.The acting is good, but what won me over was the characters. Petur Johann, our (in my opinion) most promising actor holds the film up with even tempo. All others do well - I especially liked Eggert Thorleifsson as the grumpy teacher but most of all, from the side characters Micheal Imperioli did a great job. He could have been too big for this film but he manages to fall with the Icelandic cast. And of course I have to mention Stefan Schaefer as the adorable Wolfi.The editing, filming was good, a little to gritty at times, but kept a nice overall look, and locations were great. Almost no nature shot, which is was Icelandic films often thrive on.Unusual, but great stuff.

Well, I set out with a few friends to see this movie, we went an hour before the show started to get good seats. So as you can probably imagine we where exited to see this movie :). But that excitement soon turned to horror, this movie is a complete failure, it just try's to hard to be funny that its sad, the script is poorly written and relies to heavy on the actors to make up for it...The only good acting in the whole movie was from Stefan C. Schaefer who was great, the plot was weak and even the "funny" scenes felt forced and unnatural, considering that the main actors are some of Iceland's best comedians it's well special...I would not Recommend this movie to any one, because it try's to hard and never really delivers.