The last half of this movie was very hard to watch. I kept wanting to turn my eyes away. It is indeed a bit slow in the beginning and you wonder what is really happening. Who is doing what and why, you may think, but you only learn the truth slowly. Are they idiots you think. All of them. What is unfolding it NOT what it seems in the beginning. Treachery of the worst kind is a foot. You have 2 amateurs, 3 actually, if you count the mule/girl, who are trying to solve some money issues by smuggling drugs into Iceland. The sort of dumb, do-what-I-am-told brother who has a record of drug abuse and jail time who is passive and unthinking. The "smart" lawyer brother who has used the company's money to feed his addition, which is a beautiful woman who he can't really have try as he might. We know nothing of the girl except she is Polish and has a child.
The one with the real problems is the fancy, lawyer brother who has seemingly made good in life on the surface at least but who done the stealing, over reached his boundaries, ruined his life chances, damned himself, destroyed his family such that it is because of his longing, lust actually, for this woman he can NOT have at all, who needs to solve all of that somehow with money, with violence, with lies. In the end, he saves himself, but loses his soul, what little soul he may have had though treachery of the most base kind. The other brother had his thoughts and actions in "sort of" the right place, but could not carry though, he was passive and always waiting to be told what to do by his big brother in the end is used, used up, chewed up, spit out WITHOUT A THOUGHT. With relief. The girl, used and abused, remains silent. What happened? We don't know. It wasn't shown. What did he say to her? What did he promise?? Why does she obey?? She looks away. She is mostly silent the whole movie and her silence is the our silence in the face of powerful people having their way in this world.
The moral seems to be that the "powerful", those in power, can cover up so much with pretty lies, blank faces and half truths, no truths, promises. Those dead eyes of the lawyer brother at the end say so much.
The one with the real problems is the fancy, lawyer brother who has seemingly made good in life on the surface at least but who done the stealing, over reached his boundaries, ruined his life chances, damned himself, destroyed his family such that it is because of his longing, lust actually, for this woman he can NOT have at all, who needs to solve all of that somehow with money, with violence, with lies. In the end, he saves himself, but loses his soul, what little soul he may have had though treachery of the most base kind. The other brother had his thoughts and actions in "sort of" the right place, but could not carry though, he was passive and always waiting to be told what to do by his big brother in the end is used, used up, chewed up, spit out WITHOUT A THOUGHT. With relief. The girl, used and abused, remains silent. What happened? We don't know. It wasn't shown. What did he say to her? What did he promise?? Why does she obey?? She looks away. She is mostly silent the whole movie and her silence is the our silence in the face of powerful people having their way in this world.
The moral seems to be that the "powerful", those in power, can cover up so much with pretty lies, blank faces and half truths, no truths, promises. Those dead eyes of the lawyer brother at the end say so much.