Pioneer

Director Erik Skjoldbjærg (Insomnia) makes excellent use of the high-tech, low-glamour world he depicts, and manages an ending that is happy without being farcically so.

Skjoldbjaerg is unable to make us care as much as we should, and gives the film a kind of muddy look that translates directly into the viewer's mood.

"Pioneer" has the necessary parts for a finger-pointing thriller that could boil the blood if handled well. Alas, this story of workers wounded by corrupt oil industrialists and politicians sinks from drawn-out scenes and too few surprises.

Remember this name: Aksel Hennie. If "Pioneer," a mixed bag of a conspiracy thriller, works at all, it largely does so because of him.

A brooding psychological drama where everything that happens is open to multiple interpretations and figuring out who if anyone is on your side gets harder and harder to do.

Mr. Skjoldbjaerg, who also tapped Norwegian history with his bank robbery re-enactment "Nokas," doesn't convey a creeping atmosphere of moral rot so much as an irksome glumness.

With his ratty moustache and balding head, Hennie makes an unlikely leading man (if this were Hollywood, the chiselled Bentley would surely fit the bill), but he suits the film's dour, downbeat mood, reminiscent of 1970s paranoid conspiracy thrillers.

Certainly, the diving scenes look authentic and this is a world that needs exploring. But, the thriller angle is less than effective. Some niftier writing and staging could have made this a much scarier affair.

An intense, moody conspiracy thriller set just before Norway's oil boom in the early 1980s.

It attempts to capture the feel of a 1970s-era paranoid conspiracy movie, and it succeeds in tone, even if the plot isn't quite so air-tight.

It's to Pioneer's credit that it is able to take something as clinical-sounding as "decompression sickness" and successfully turn it into a tension-ratcheting plot point.