Iceland always seemed to me to be the place of exotic mystery. The lonely island in the middle of Atlantic ocean. This movie was little more realistic than my assumptions. The story is old and seen many times before - father and children on two completely opposite sides. The battle between tradition and progress , between lifelong dreams and reality. Mr.Kormakur sets his movie on the harsh and beautiful landscape making the nature an active participant. All in all it is a well done film, with strong acting, but with one significant shortcoming. All the characters are so despicable that is hard to take any of it seriously. And than maybe that was the intention.

This reminds me a bit of French family dramas with skeletons in the closet revealed amidst festive holiday get-togethers. But Director Baltasar Kormakur's Icelanders are decidedly on the wild side, corrupt, and often sloppy drunk. Their dialogue is sharp and rough, their language biting and crude, their behavior violent.The story is a bit familiar with the head of a fishing family getting old and worrying about the business he has built. Currently running it is his elder son who does not inspire confidence. In fact, he frequently goes against the old man's wishes. But it soon becomes clear that the old man has lost his judgment and is living in the past, and it is he who is detrimental to the company's bottom line.Plot point one is the return of the favorite son with his pregnant girl friend. This is the son who should be running the company, the patriarch believes. However the son has no interest in living out his life in the fishing village and neither does his girl friend. The girl friend is the objectifying element in the story, and we are compelled to see the story from her point of view.Also returning are the daughter and her husband. Together she and the older son conspire to wrest control of the company from the father...and then all hell breaks loose.Complicating matters is the fact that Kristin, the favorite son's old girl friend (and half-sibling), is still madly in love with him and won't let him go.What makes this work is a steamy script with some laugh-out-loud moments, and a careful, atmospheric direction that shows a way of life that is familiar but distant. This is ultimately a story about the encroachment of the modern world on an Icelandic fishing village. It could be a fishing village anywhere.See this for Baltasar Kormakur, a film maker of promise.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Despite being set against the paralyzing beauty of the Icelandiccoast, "The Sea" is nothing more than standard family reuniondrama. We've all seen this movie before whether in high form"Celebration" or the more banal "Home for the Holidays." Although"The Sea" shoots for the high form, it fails to surpass the banal. InBaltasar Kormakur's sophomore feature (he also directed thecritically acclaimed 101 Reykjavik), he explores the explosiverelationship between parents and children. The plot revolvesaround an aging owner of a small-town fishing business, morespecifically, his narrow vision of the future and the forces ofprogress and time that stand in his way. While Kormakur'sthemes are explicit and the tension apparent, the transitionsbetween moods and the dramatic arc are confused and sloppy.The film begins by introducing us to the perils facing the mom andpop store equivalent of the fishing industry: technologically inferior,inefficient and out-performed by the corporate competition. In theface of outstanding loses and potential bankruptcy, the stubbornaging owner who built the enterprise and consequently the townthat has grown from its existence refuses to sell out. Instead, theweak man calls upon his children in hopes that they will beinspired by a duty to family and home, resurrect the dying industryand restore the business to the father's imagined version of itsglory days. The children, who have long abandoned any sentimental connection with home land, have different ideas. Thereunion and father's request only reminds them of the years ofsuffering and mistreatment they endured while under his roof andthe repressed anger they harbored after all of these years.The film undergoes a major transition as it shifts between the firstand second acts. The first is designed as some light introductionto the backward ways of the Icelandic rural society and theincompatibility between the coca-cola city kids and the coarsenature of the unruly outback. However, as the film shifts from perilsof the practice to perils of the past, and as the comic relief issubstituted with explosions of anger, the emotional outbursts andthe venomous shouting matches seem ill-explained. The causelacks the force to bring about the ensuing eruptions, which in theend seem almost farcical on account of their extreme nature.Nevertheless in light of several outstanding shortcomings,Baltasar does shoot some very beautiful scenes and framed a seton par with poetry. Unfortunately, there was no bite to theprovocative premise.For more foreign film news, reviews and interviews check outwww.au-cinema.com

Reasonably well acted and written, and it had what I went to it for, namely Iceland, but otherwise it was the same old dysfunctional family melodrama I've seen 500 times before. It was occasionally interesting to note parallels to the old sagas - Icelandic writers seem to be constitutionally incapable of not referring to them, but I guess if you have a living 1000 year old literary tradition, you might as well use it. If it was set in New York, I wouldn't have wasted my time on it though. If you've seen a lot of movies, you'll probably be thinking things like "not the freaking dinner-table meltdown scene again" as you watch it go through all the standard dysfunctional-family plot devices.