Jar City (2008)

Unnerving and emotional, this police thriller has an unnerving breadth and depth, as a murder case opens a decades-old inquiry that brings all kinds of dark creepiness with it. It's like an Icelandic twist on Seven.

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09/12/08

Kormákur, who made the highly original 101 Reykjavik, is clearly saying something pessimistic about his homeland and, as a film-maker, has the means to do so to some effect.

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09/12/08

The burden of this Icelandic procedural thriller will put a chill in your bones, if the lugubrious, wind-whipped coastal setting hasn't done already.

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09/12/08

A murder story in the grungy-misanthropic style of Kormákur’s 101 Reykjavik, but without the plaintive wit or probing compassion.

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09/12/08

I’ll admit that I struggled to keep up with some of the more intricate twists and turns, but things come together for a shocking and memorable finale.

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09/12/08

Refusing to spoonfeed its audience, this is a dark, convoluted thriller, tightly scripted and richly atmospheric.

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09/12/08

Bleak surroundings and grim humour create a suitably sombre mood, but in the wake of juicy police procedurals like Dennis Lehane adaptations Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, this is disappointingly straightforward stuff.

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09/12/08

The disinterring of corpses makes this film almost too ghoulish for its own good, but Iceland's top director Baltasar Kormákur wraps it up in his distinctive frostbitten style.

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09/12/08

It's an intriguing puzzle that held me gripped until the very end.

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09/12/08

It’s a terrific piece of direction from Kormákur. Everything, from the look of the film, to the brilliantly unsettling use of food as a recurring motif, is judged perfectly.

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09/12/08