The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters. Amazingly, all of the footage was shot in the ocean (no tanks) without stunt professionals. The lead actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson makes the protagonist endearing, and he must be a hell of a good sport to spend all that time in icy water. Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur made the unconventional and successful choice not to end the movie with a climactic rescue, but to instead explore the impact of the incident and the attempts to explain how it was possible.
Kormákur also wrote and directed a very different and even better 2006 film, the very dark neo-noir police procedural Jar City, available on DVD and streaming.
The Deep plays again at Cinequest on March 3 and 4.