Smilla's Sense of Snow

If striking visuals were enough, Bille August's adaptation of "Smilla's Sense of Snow" might be a winner, at least in its opening and closing sequences. But the film quickly bogs down for most of its two-hour length, the central character is surprisingly mean-spirited in places and much of the way it's rather dull.

Still, those opening and closing sequences, filmed in Greenland, are quite stunning, along with a few more here and there. And the setting for most of the movie — Copenhagen — is unique enough to hold interest for awhile.

The deliberately vague story builds gradually, like a Hitchcock thriller where a mysterious incident attracts the interest of an innocent party and soon that person is the target of the film's villains.

Unfortunately, in this case the story becomes more murky and muddled — and less convincing — as it goes along.

The film begins with a spectacular science-fiction moment, as a meteorite hits a patch of Greenland near a fisherman in the mid-19th century, leading to a sort of ground avalanche of snow and ice.

Then the action shifts to the present day, as Smilla (Julia Ormond) is introduced, a cloistered scientist who takes it upon herself to investigate the death of a 6-year-old boy who has apparently fallen from the rooftop of their apartment building. Smilla believes the boy was murdered.

The police dismiss her accusation, but Smilla, being an expert on snow, believes the footprints in the snow on the roof indicate the boy was being chased.

Smilla's relationship with the child is shown in stark flashbacks. She is a woman with a rather nasty personality (whose unpleasant disposition is never adequately explained), but she immediately takes to the lonely boy who is ignored by his drunken mother after the death of his father.

Eventually, she learns that the boy was the subject of ongoing secret medical examinations and they are ultimately tied to the meteorite, the possibility of a unique energy source, and some killer prehistoric worms.

Along the way, Smilla joins forces with a stuttering neighbor (Gabriel Byrne) who may or may not be what he seems, and she enlists aid from her physician father (Robert Loggia), a pathologist (Jim Broadbent) and a retired woman (Vanessa Redgrave). The villain of the piece is another prominent doctor, played by Richard Harris (who doesn't have any dialogue until the movie is almost over).

The greatest strengths of director August ("Pelle the Conqueror," "The Best Intentions") lie in his ability to quietly and deliberately develop characters whose interactions unravel the story. He's probably not the best choice for a violent mystery-thriller with occasional action scenes.

And while Ormond is never convincing as a half Inuit, her chilly screen persona perfectly matches the character of a cold-hearted scientist who is warmed up a bit by a young child, and then through a reluctant, torrid affair with a neighbor.

Still, the movie is inert and loses the audience far too quickly, never fully recovering.

"Smilla's Sense of Snow" is rated R for violence, gore, a brief sex scene with nudity and profanity.