This is like Iceland’s Gone Baby Gone. A, forgive the pun, chilling procedural about generational sin. It’ll make you want to lock your door, get under a nice blanket with a cup of cocoa and shut the world out.

| Oct 21, 2022

A well-crafted police procedural written and directed by the Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur.

| Original Score: B | Sep 30, 2015

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2008

A disturbing, bleak, multilayered mystery that will not just worm under your flesh but also wriggle inside your nightmares.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2008

A satisfying, altogether distinctive piece of filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Sep 12, 2008

In short, this is a superbly made, thoroughly engaging thriller that exerts a powerful emotional grip and is well worth seeking out. Recommended

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2008

A chilling murder mystery which should do wonders for Iceland's film industry.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2008

Tremendously acted and shot with memorable confidence, Jar City deserves a much wider release than it's apparently going to get.

Full Review | Jul 9, 2008

bazeis (ton skinotheti) se katigoria spanioy talentoy, kai toy syghoreis tin adynamia na brei kaskanter tis prokopis gia merikes apo tis apaititikes skines

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 29, 2008

Terrifically acted, expertly shot and painstakingly paced, Jar City investigates deeper, darker themes. And Erlendur is a reminder that homicide detectives don't save lives so much as exhume the meanings of violence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2008

Jar City is an absorbing mystery connecting different generations and set in the desolate landscapes of Iceland.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 3, 2008

The well-directed cast competently handles the genre material

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 1, 2008