The Scandinavian crime genre has a new Reykjavik thriller. By DARREN BEVAN.

WHEN A film opens with the death of a child, you know you’re in for a gritty ride. Jar City delivers on such an opening, its content based on the blockbuster book which rocked Iceland back in 2000. Following on from the child’s death, we jump to a bludgeoned body at the centre of a typical murder scene, which one detective remarks, “It’s as pointless as every other murder – and the criminals have left us plenty of evidence.” But CSI this is not: the hard bitten detective Erlendur, an investigator in the traditional mold, is an exponent of hard graft, gut instinct, and a stickler for leaving no stone unturned. This detective though is not perfect – he has a whore for a daughter whose standing in the community is used to taunt him by the very criminals he pursues – and in one particularly uncomfortable scene, displays a penchant for eating whole sheep’s heads for dinner. The film’s bleak tone is complemented by the deserted landscapes of Iceland, which director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik, The Sea) pieces together to reinforce the atmosphere and add to the sense of foreboding and doom. Laconic and deadpan humour features extensively, yet Jar City’s overall theme – the sharing of genomic and medical data, a real-life project which fueled the book’s controversy – makes for an unlikely adhesive between the grim mundanities of detective work and the apparently disparate plot threads. It’s a welcome addition to the more intelligent crime dramas we’ve seen recently, and one with plot twists you’ll have to pay attention to throughout.