For a film few people have ever heard of, this was surprisingly good. It was very dark and mysterious, and had a certain quality about it that made me stay up till 3am to watch it. Julia Ormond plays Smilla, a women who knows everything about snow and ice. She comes home one day to find that her neighbor's son has died from falling off the roof of their building. The police treat it as an accident, but Smilla knows the boy very well, and suspects foul play. She spends the movie trying to find out what happened to the boy, and almost gets herself killed on a few occasions. The thing I liked most about this movie was that nothing was at it seemed. You couldn't tell who was helping her and who was hurting her. People said and did things that looked innocent, but weren't. Gabriel Byrne, and Robert Loggia head the supporting cast. Byrne was another resident in the building, someone who had this strange attraction to Smilla, and he always let her know it. I didn't understand this love part of the plot line, I think the movie could have been done without it, but it didn't hurt it at all. The only little thing I disliked about the movie was the actress who played the dead boy's mother. Her wailing just bugged me the entire time she was on screen. The movie felt more like a good mystery book, with little things being put into play at different points, then having it all come together at the end. Smilla was a very hard woman, someone who didn't want anyone's help, but who had a soft spot in her, so much so she would risk her own life to find out the truth about the boy. This is one of those sleeper video titles that you should rent sometime.

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