Devil's Island
buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices
|
 |
List Price: $14.98
Features
• Color
• Subtitled
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 1997
DVD Release : 05 July, 2000 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] |
DVD : This item is currently not available. |
|
Devil's Island Customer Reviews
|
|
|
|
♥♥♥♥♥ |
A Depressing Film Well Acted and Directed
|
This is a depressing, largely nonjudgmental film about a family which probably would be called trailer trash if they lived in America instead of Iceland. It's the Fifties, and Devil's Island is the name of a former U. S. military base near Reykjavik the Americans have abandoned. It has become the home of hundreds of poor Icelanders as families have moved into the decaying quonset huts. Cast-off lumber, sheets of tin, rocks and trash litter the place. It's too cold for mud, but pools of icy water collect along the dirt streets. There's not a speck of green anywhere.
Among the families is a grim, elderly, harsh grandmother who believes she can predict the future, her unhappy, unshaven husband, their loose-living daughter with two sons and a daughter of her own. In time the grandparents see their daughter marry an American serviceman and move to Kansas City. They continue to live in the squalor of Devil's Island with their grandchildren. Time passes. Then one of the sons, Baddi (Baltasar Kormakus), a selfish grown delinquent with lots of attitude, flies off to visit his mother and her now well-off husband. He returns with a used red Cadillac with fins, a leather jacket, a greasy pompadour, dark glasses and with no respect for anyone except Elvis Presley. His brother, Dani (Sveian Geirsson), however, is shy, quiet and stays close to home. Baddi drinks, carouses and makes life hell for everyone. He usually brings his drunken buddies and their girls back home to continue to party. Dani eventually breaks away, learns to fly and begins to assert himself. By the end of the movie one major character is dead and not much about the family, the quality of their life or the trouble and unpleasantness that Baddi brings with him in everything he does has changed. Baddi doesn't appear to have learned anything except self-pity, and is probably going to slip even further into alcholism-fueled depression. The quonset huts now are being torn down and the families of Devil's Island are being moved into multi-floor concrete apartment boxes which look even more character-destroying than what they are replacing.
This is a movie that is part black-comedy, but there's not much to smile at. Devil's Island is more often harsh than gentle, more often ironic than humorous. The look of the film is outstanding, but it places you in a physical environment you wouldn't want to visit much less live in. The redeeming qualities center around Dani, who manages to find a life after being overshadowed for years by his brother's braggadocio, and by the grandfather, Tomi, played by Gisli Halldorsson. The last shot of the movie is of Tomi walking away toward a job, whistling. There may not be much to whistle about in his life, but he finds something. I'm glad I watched the movie and I don't regret buying it, but I'm not sure how many times I'll return to it. The DVD transfer is very good. |
|
Devil's Island dvd movie.