Rating: NNN
Between making Contraband and 2 Guns, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik, Jar City) went home to tell the true story of Gulli (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), an Icelandic fisherman who swam several miles back to shore after his fishing trawler capsized, enduring six hours in the freezing North Atlantic.
The ordeal is recreated entirely through practical means in an extended sequence that forms the movie’s utterly riveting midsection. But once Gulli returns home, the film bogs down in a fairly dull recounting of the medical community’s interest in learning how the big, out-of-shape fisherman survived for hours in conditions that should have killed him almost immediately.
That stuff may well be historically accurate, but it’s not nearly as interesting as the flashes of survivor guilt we see behind Ólafsson’s eyes.
