Icelandic cinema freezes over in Falcons, a glacial thriller that wants to be warm and witty but never generates enough heat to thaw itself out. Simon (Keith Carradine) is a suicidal American who travels back to his ancestral home in Iceland. There he meets red-haired artist Dua (Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir), a "floaty" (read loopy) free spirit. She's young enough to be his daughter, but that doesn't stop Simon from escaping with her to Germany to try and sell a rare bird of prey on the black market.
The wintry landscapes of northern Europe have thrown up some strange and offbeat films - from the Finnish surrealism of The Man Without A Past to the Icelandic weirdness of 101 Reykjavik. Falcons belongs to much the same tradition. All of the characters here are slightly cracked, as if driven mad by the lack of sunlight, freezing temperatures, and general isolation of life at the top of the world.
"NEVER EVEN BEGINS TO WORK"
Striding through all this chaos is Simon, a hardboiled leather-jacketed ex-con who's used to rolling with life's punches and knows how to handle himself. It's an incongruous attempt to blend kooky comedy with film noir that never even begins to work. The glib reference to Wim Wenders' The American Friend - Simon spends most of his time speaking into a tape recorder, much like Dennis Hopper in that German neo-noir - hardly convinces, nor does the central relationship between the oddball odd couple.
The pair end up in Hamburg, desperately trying to sell the rare falcon they've brought with them from Iceland but finding no one willing to buy it. At which point, writer-director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson becomes so desperate for ideas that he drums up a completely unbelievable shootout and a melodramatic revelation about Simon's chequered past that are as ill-conceived as they are ridiculous. It serves only to confirm what we've already guessed: this feathered thriller is completely bird-brained.
In Icelandic with English subtitles.
Falcons (Fálkar) (2004)
