DVD Review: A Little Trip to Heaven

Three stories of human treachery are given an unexpected link in this dry comedy drama from Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Korm kur. Holt (Forest Whitaker) is an insurance investigator who is sent to Minnesota to look into a bus accident; the bus seems to have had significantly more passengers after it crashed than it had when it left the station and Holt posing as a police detective needs to know who is telling the truth and who is attempting to cash in on the tragedy. Later Holt is back on the job when a badly burned body is found in a wrecked car and the ID on the corpse indicates the victim was a small-time con artist with a police record. The victim’s sister Isold (Julia Stiles) claims that her brother’s accident happened after his gas tank was drained and he was struggling to make his way home on a stormy night but Holt isn’t buying it; and Isold’s husband Fred (Jeremy Renner) and son Thor (Alfred Harmsworth) don’t seem especially trustworthy.

Review:
This 2005 movie is a decent movie if you’re a fan of Forest Whitaker. There are no surprises in this script, it’s just good acting from people you would expect to do so. Don’t look for this movie to be any sort of classic, it’s just an unnoticed one.

This crime drama has Whitaker and Peter Coyote as insurance auditors that keep people away from any insurance pay out that they can. They believe the house should have all odds in its favor. They have performances as good as you would expect from them.

Julia Stiles and Jeremy Renner come in as the couple with a major secret. Stiles’ character is down on her luck and lost. Renner murders a man for an insurance scam. The whole mess and they have a kid. The two of them have so much drama. Stiles and Renner do very good jobs, as well.

There are really no bad performances from any of the actors. Baltasar Kormakur really did not have to work hard as the director. He barely had to exert himself on any of this and made it a sleeper that stayed asleep.

Kormakur and Edward Weinman wrote a solid crime drama. They try to throw in a twist, but it has been seen before. The whole story seemed like there should have been a rewrite that it never got.

The pace of the movie is decent and it doesn’t drag. You at least want to stay with the movie the whole time. Mugison does a good job with the music, as well.

Overall, this is a movie that you can watch if you plan on staying home. Solid, but no where the caliber it could have been with the cast it had.

Review by Paul Shannon

Grade: C+
Buy on Amazon: A Little Trip to Heaven