Wave, The (2015) [Blu-ray]
Action | Drama | Thriller

Although anticipated, no one is really ready when the mountain pass above the scenic, narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger collapses and creates an 85-meter high violent tsunami. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.

Storyline: Based on the fact that mountain pass Åkneset, located in the Geiranger fjord in Norway, one day will fall out and create a violent tsunami of over 80 meters that will crush everything in its path before it hits land in Greenland. A geologist gets caught in the middle of it and a race against time begins. Written by Fredrik Rønningen

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben, June 21, 2016 The Wave (or Bølgen, as it's known at home) was the most successful Norwegian film of 2015 in its native land, which only goes to show that Americans aren't the only moviegoers who enjoy watching their country and its citizens devastated on screen. Like his fellow filmmaker Mikkel Brænne Sandemose (Ragnarok), director Roar Uthaug wanted to bring a distinctively Hollywood genre closer to home, and the result is an efficiently plotted disaster film in the tradition of Earthquake, Dante's Peak and San Andreas. The film is distributed in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures, which has chosen The Wave as its first Blu-ray disc to include a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

The Wave is classical in its setup. The film's central figure is a geologist, Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), who works at an early warning station monitoring seismic activity in a deep crevice of Åkerneset, a mountain overlooking the picturesque Geiranger Fjord. The popular tourist town of Geiranger sits on the nearby shore. Twice now, in 1905 and 1934, massive rock slides from unstable peaks have triggered tsunamis in the fjords. Should the same thing happen to Åkerneset, scientists have calculated that the occupants of Geiranger will have no more than ten minutes to escape to higher ground.

Today, however, Kristian is bidding farewell to his colleagues as he and his family pack up their house for a move to the city of Stavanger, where the geologist has secured a cushy job with an oil company. His young daughter, Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande), is intrigued by the prospect of a new home, but his teenage son, Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro), is dejected at being removed from familiar environs. After his office party, Kristian is supposed to depart with the two kids, while his wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), winds up her job working the desk at Hotel Geiranger. But Kristian, who is afflicted with the Cassandra-like insight that curses every hero of a disaster film, can't escape the feeling that the latest readings from the mountain signal impending doom. Instead of leaving on the ferry with Julia and Sondre, he races back to the monitoring station to warn his colleagues.

In another familiar disaster film trope, Kristian's former boss, Arvid (Fridtjov Såheim), refuses to accept the geologist's intuition, although he does agree to increase the town's alert status. Having missed the last ferry, Kristian and the children must now spend one more night in the shadow of Åkerneset—which, of course, is when the mountain abruptly collapses and a massive wall of water begins coursing toward the town.

The Wave's script—which was co-written by John Kåre Raake, the author of Ragnarok, another Norwegian re-imagining of a familiar Hollywood genre—contrives to separate Kristian's family, so that they are in different places when the tsunami hits. Kristian and his daughter are desperately racing up a mountain road, where their progress is blocked by a panicked traffic jam. Idun and her son are trapped in the hotel with two other guests when the wave levels the town. Splitting up the family allows Urthaug both to depict multiple forms of devastation and to provide the characters with a variety of challenges after the initial impact. It also gives him a bigger canvas to convey the magnitude of the wave's destructive power.

It may seem odd to speak of "restraint" in the context of a disaster movie, but one of The Wave's virtues is that it sticks to credible phenomena rather than piling up improbable catastrophes one after another in the name of spectacle. The multiple quakes in San Andreas may have provided lucrative work for effects houses, and they are undeniably eye-popping—but they're also numbing. By the time the last temblor rocks San Francisco, destruction on a citywide scale has become so routine that it's almost dull. Urthaug's film, by contrast, limits itself to one harrowing deluge, followed by many smaller but equally deadly predicaments left in its wake for those lucky enough to survive. The director also effectively individuates some of the victims so that showing their bodies in the aftermath has genuine impact.

The Wave is all the more sobering for being not so much "the imagination of disaster" (in Susan Sontag's famous phrase) as a simulation of the inevitable. The mountain Åkerneset really exists, and it really does have a deep crevice that is continuously monitored and steadily expanding. As a closing title card informs us: "All experts agree there will be a rockslide. They do not know when."

The Wave was Norway's official submission to the 2016 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, but it failed to make the final cut, and it's not hard to see why, given the Academy's well-known preference for high-toned drama. Urthaug's film is classic popcorn fare, and it has no other aspiration than to entertain, which it does well, reinventing and invigorating familiar elements for a new environment. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -2.6- Norway nominated this film for the best foreign film Oscar, but it didn't make the cut. As a disaster movie, this is less silly than most of what Hollywood produces. The characters are developed a bit in the first 30 minutes of the movie, so you do care a little about their survival. And the actual disaster is one that could really happen. But in the end, it is still a disaster movie..
[V4.5-A5.0] Netflix HD - No D-Box


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