2019 Norwegian disaster film, dir. Andreas Andersen, Kristoffer Joner,
Ane Dahl Torp: IMDb /
allmovie. Kristian Eikjord
is a hero after the events of Bølgen, but his life has fallen apart.
Now he's got another bee in his bonnet, about the geology underpinning
Oslo…
The psychological subtlety isn't something I expect in a disaster
film. We know that Kristian is a geology whisperer who is always
right, but crucially he doesn't; it's easy for him to go down the
same path as before, of being the one guy who tries to warn about the
danger while everyone else chooses to ignore the signs, but he knows
what that got him last time: post-traumatic stress and a failing
marriage.
(I am slightly disappointed, I admit, that after all that sorting out
their problems like adults in the first film our lead couple are back
on the rocks for the second. But also, given how much of a mutually
supporting partnership they were three years ago, I'd expect them both
to have broken down more from their separation.)
But in any case, an old geologist friend of Kristian's has died in a
tunnel collapse under Oslo, and everyone else believes it was just
caused by construction work. Of course it wasn't, and there are more
splendidly menacing visual displays showing very small numbers
changing surprisingly fast.
The final sequences are lovely, but oddly conventional: we've seen
shenanigans in lift shafts before. Still, the last moments with the
attempts to rescue various people from the top floor of a high-rise
building that's in the process of folding in half are very effective;
one never forgets that these are meant to be human beings, not CGI
dolls.
I didn't love it as much as I did Bølgen but I did have a good time.
Trailer here. And I
talk about this film further on Ribbon of
#Memes.