Director Erik Skjoldbjrg (Insomnia) makes excellent use of the high-tech, low-glamour world he depicts, and manages an ending that is happy without being farcically so.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2014

Skjoldbjaerg is unable to make us care as much as we should, and gives the film a kind of muddy look that translates directly into the viewer's mood.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 18, 2014

"Pioneer" has the necessary parts for a finger-pointing thriller that could boil the blood if handled well. Alas, this story of workers wounded by corrupt oil industrialists and politicians sinks from drawn-out scenes and too few surprises.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2014

Remember this name: Aksel Hennie. If "Pioneer," a mixed bag of a conspiracy thriller, works at all, it largely does so because of him.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 5, 2014

A brooding psychological drama where everything that happens is open to multiple interpretations and figuring out who if anyone is on your side gets harder and harder to do.

| Dec 4, 2014

Mr. Skjoldbjaerg, who also tapped Norwegian history with his bank robbery re-enactment "Nokas," doesn't convey a creeping atmosphere of moral rot so much as an irksome glumness.

| Dec 4, 2014

The underwater sequences stun and terrify - nothing says claustrophobia quite like two weeks in a pressurized diving bell with someone you can't necessarily trust - and there's almost as much moisture and terror on land to drive Petter round the bend.

| Dec 4, 2014

In a cast that includes Wes Bentley, Stephen Lang and Jonathan LaPaglia, it's Mr. Hennie who makes "Pioneer" worth watching ...

| Dec 4, 2014

The tension never lets up.

| Dec 3, 2014

Although involving on a scene-to-scene basis, Erik Skjoldbjaerg's '80s-set Norwegian thriller is curiously muted in impact.

| Dec 1, 2014

Though technically quite an achievement and well-acted... [Pioneer] never [becomes] the character drama, white-knuckle thrill ride or -- even better! -- smart combination of both that the film clearly could be.

| Dec 1, 2014

Its greatest asset, and another trait it shares with Mann and Fincher's work, is a careful attention toward the particulars of its milieu in a way that doesn't call attention to those period touches.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2014

This murky Scandinavian conspiracy thriller about deep-sea divers during the Norwegian oil boom of the 1980s suffers from a plot so convoluted that it makes The Big Sleep look straightforward.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2014

The diving sequences are involving, but the pressure seems to have gotten to the scriptwriters. Brain death is the result.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2014

The Hunger Games' Wes Bentley treads water in this dull oceanic thriller.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2014

Viewers who enjoyed such Scandi hits as A Hijacking and Baltasar Kormku's The Deep will be pleased with this solid actioner from Insomnia director Erik Skjoldbjrg

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 11, 2014

A suspense drama devoted to one fleeting moment of sub-thermocline narcolepsy. If nothing else, a first.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2014

A souped-up and often absurd Norwegian conspiracy thriller: a sort of gloomy, jumper-wearing Silkwood.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 10, 2014

Hennie's quiet, hangdog tenacity alone might have kept Pioneer afloat, but the more tangled the plot becomes, the more hackneyed Skjoldbaerg's tactics get.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 10, 2014

Insomnia director Erik Skoldbjaerg knows his '70s conspiracy thrillers backwards. As a result, Pioneer delivers insidious, shadowy tension.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2014