If you have read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know this is all
Slartbartfast’s fault. He to delight in designing Norway’s fjords.
Unfortunately, they are ticking time-bombs. Eventually, a seismic shift will
lead to a rock slide and that will inevitably cause a tidal wave. That day is
now in Roar Uthaug’s The Wave (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
This is supposed to be the aptly-named
geologist Kristian Eikfjord’s last day working for the Geiranger warning
station, so you know the coast is toast. Just when he has the kids all packed up
in the car, his Spidey sense starts tingling. His wife Idun was supposed to
join them later after working through the tourist season at town’s luxury
hotel, but when her husband gets sidetracked by a potential tsunami-style catastrophe
(evidently, it happened before in 1934), she fixes up their teen-aged son
Sondre (yes, he’s a guy) with a room instead. However, the geologist and their
young daughter Julia opt to camp out in their former home for old times’ sake.
As a result, the family will be separated when the mega-wave hits.
Of course, by the time the dreaded wave
starts, it is already too late. Eikfjord the alarmist was ready to evacuate
twelve hours ago, so it is a little hard to figure why he stuck around.
Regardless, the good residents of Geiranger will only have ten minutes to reach
high ground when the station finally sounds the alarm. No, that is really not
enough time, especially when the moody Sondre is skateboarding in the basement
with headphones cranked up to eleven.
When the actual wave comes in, Uthaug’s
devastation is as good as anything Hollywood has produced. Not surprisingly,
the aftermath will be just as perilous, with screenwriters John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg
borrowing pages from Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure. Water has an
inconvenient tendency to rise, doesn’t it? It general, The Wave is a slightly better than average disaster movie, but it
seems like it will do something awesomely dark and unexpected at the end, only
to cop out at the last moment, leaving the audience feeling manipulated.
Still, the fjord-bounded setting is
spectacularly cinematic and the well-known Norwegian cast is uniformly
competent and polished. As Kristian, Kristoffer Joner is a blandly likable
absent-minded everyman. Both kids are similarly serviceable, but it is Ane Dahl
Torp (so terrific in 1001 Grams) who
best stands out as their down-to-earth and tenacious mother.
