November 10, 2016 -- This is a straight up disaster film set in Norway. A geologist, Kristian Eikjord (played by Kristoffer Joner of “The Revenant”) is on the last day of his job monitoring an unstable mountainside along a narrow fjord that threatens the village of Geiranger where he lives. A landslide can cause a tsunami wave 80 meters high, destroying everything in its path. Guess what happens?

Kristian and his family are packing up to leave for his new job with an oil company when he senses that something is wrong on that unstable moutainside. The seismic sensors are giving off unusual readings.

Kristian and his family, along with tourists at a local hotel where Kristian's wife works are in terrible danger from the giant wave, if he cannot warn the people of the danger in time.

The film uses the usual disaster film setup, introducing the characters, explaining the danger (in this case, that includes a prologue with pictures of an actual disaster in Norway caused by a similar landslide) and building up to the disaster and the rescue efforts afterwards.

The actors do a good job, both in the scenes leading up to the disaster, and in the disaster scenes themselves, which are physically challenging. Kristian's wife, (played by Ane Dahl Torp) has one of the film's most suspenseful, tragic dramatic scenes in the film, along with their teenage son (played by Jonas Hoff Oftebro). Their irrepressible young daughter (played by Edith Haagenrud-Sande) also has a number of good scenes in the film, interacting with her parents.

The film uses some impressive special effects to show the giant wave. The drama of people trying to escape from a flooded room where they are trapped is more gritty than American films usually allow, and more realistic, too. The formula is followed all the way to the standard resuscitation scene that has been done to death (pun intended).

How many times have to seen a person in a film giving another person CPR, only to have another person grab them and tell them to stop? It makes no sense to stop in these types of cases, except to save film, and to heighten drama. In any case, if you are doing CPR in real life, don't follow the film formula.

This is a pretty standard, but nonetheless effective, disaster film with some good performances and visual effects. The languages in the film are Norwegian, with a tiny bit of English. This film rates a B.

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