+ Best Icelandic Movie of the Year + Most Overlooked Movie of the Year
Jacques is a bar owner in New York, who has no family or friends and is dying. So when a young vagrant by the name of Lucas, who has attempted suicide, shows up in his life, he trains him in his trade and makes him his heir.
The Good Heart, the third feature written and directed by great Icelandic filmmaker Dagur Kári (Dark Horse/Voksne Mennesker (2005)), is a small but incredibly warm and well-told film. It is also extremely well-acted: Brian Cox (The Veteran (2011)) is outstanding as the old geezer, and Paul Dano (Weapons (2007)) doesn't shrink away next to the great alderman. For those who have seen the two together in Michael Cuesta's masterpiece L.I.E. (2001), it is an added joy to see them dramatically engaged in something very worth their capacities again here.
The great theme of The Good Heart is to be good and able to give unconditionally, which is an important and noble core to a film that takes place mostly in a brown tavern. Countless scenes stand out and radiate with awesome dialog and originality. Kári also manages to somehow make the mythic metropolis seem almost small in a still credible way, - quite a feat. SPOILER The ending with its heart transplantation is the weakest point of this generally brilliant movie.
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Cox and Dano discuss marriage in this scene from the film
Cost: Reportedly 3.8 mil. $
Box office: 343k $
= Box office disaster
[The Good Heart premiered 11 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 95 minutes. Filming took place around April 2008 in New York, Iceland and the Dominican Republic. It opened #81 to a 5k $ opening weekend in 5 theaters in North America, its peak there, where it grossed just 20k $ (5.8 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were Spain with 138k $ (40.2 %), Germany with 124k $ (36.2 %) and Iceland with 30k $ (8.7 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a scathing 1½/4 star review. It was nominated for the Nordic Council's Film Prize and won 4 out of 8 nominations for Edda Awards (Iceland's Oscar). Six years went by before Kári was ready with another film: Icelandic Virgin Mountain/Fúsi (2015). The Good Heart is rotten at 31 % with a 4.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Good Heart?
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