Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

writers_reign The consensus here at IMDb seems to be that this is a fine effort and I'll go along with that. Because I know nothing of Norway, the Norwegian people and/or culture it would be reasonably easy to go along with the surreal aspects of Bent Hamer's film and take it at face value but common sense kicks in and says that it is unlikely in the extreme that so many odd balls would cross the path of Odd Horten in so short a time. On the plus side there is no attempt to rationalise (for example) the young boy who, far from being fazed to find a strange old man outside his bedroom, asks the man to sit with him until he falls asleep - this, of course, in a world where we see paedophiles under the bed. If, however, you can get past this then you will think nothing of the chef being led away in handcuffs in front of diners in a restaurant followed by the waiter announcing 'for obvious reasons I will not be taking any further orders for food' and life just going on. These are but two slightly bizarre moments in a film studded with them so you can take it or leave it. For the record I took it.

jotix100 Odd Horten, a Norweian train operator, is doing his last trip at the helm of his locomotive. The trip will take him from Oslo to Bergen through the snowed countryside that seems to go on forever. Horten arrives at the inn where he has stayed during his years doing the route. Fro Thorgensen, the woman in charge, asks Horten if this is the end, which makes us think he had been having a long affair with her when he overnights in her place. Being a man of a few words, he does not have an answer to her question.Odd's friends from the railroad get together that night to celebrate his retirement with a dinner at a restaurant where they go through routines they have enjoyed during his years of working for the railroad. Odd is impassive to what his buddies are trying to do to celebrate his many years at work. Later, they decide to go to the apartment of one of the people at the party. Horten gets separated from the group, but he is given the code to enter the building. When he return from buying his pipe tobacco, he cannot get in. Not knowing what to do, he decides to go up via the scaffolding outside the building. Unfortunately, he gets into a stranger's apartment, where a young boy holds him up by his side, not letting him go. Odd oversleeps and is late for his return trip.In Oslo, Odd goes to visit his mother, an avid skier, now living at a senior's home. The woman does not utter a word, but listens to her son intently. One day, Odd coming out of a tobacco shop, finds a man that is laying on the ground next to the streetcar's rail. He manages to get him up, and it turns out he is Trigve Sissener, a former Norwegian ambassador who had a long career in Africa and Indochina. The grateful Trigve asks him to go home. The men fall into an easy conversation as the doctor shows and tells stories about his years abroad. Giving a lift home, Trigve offers to drive with his eyes closed. Odd is not too happy, but goes along, trusting his newly found friend's instincts. Odd is shocked when the car comes to a complete stop at a curve, realizing Trigve suffered a massive heart attack.Odd Horten had regretted the fact that he was not a skier, like his mother. He always wanted to do one ski jump from one of the runs not far from the city. Going back to Trigve's place, where he saw a pair of skis, he goes in and retrieves the equipment for his jump. Coming out of the house he meets a man who turns out to be the real Trigve. Odd overcomes his fears and jumps. The next thing we see is Odd going to Bergen to Fru Thorgensen, who is waiting for him."Odd Horten" conceived and directed by Bent Hamer, is a deadpan comedy where not much happens, and yet, it holds our attention. Like his previous film, "Factotum" and "Kitchen Stories", the director shows a knack for making everyday occurrences interesting. With Odd Horten, he created a stoic man that has gone with the flow, never doing anything out of the ordinary. Suddenly, as he has reached retirement age, he suddenly wakes up, no doubt a bit shaken by watching a new friend die in front of his eyes and begins living, for a change.The excellent Bard Owe is Odd Horten. An actor that conveys a lot with an economy of gesture, he is perfect as the man whose life has passed him by. Equally good is Esken Skjonberg, seen as Trigve Sissener. The supporting cast does a marvelous job for the director.

lastliberal You could excel in your job like Odd Horton, but what if, like him, you defined your life by what you didn't do. He never ski jumped, and now it is too late. He is 67 and has to retire from being a railroad engineer, and doesn't know what to do with himself.He always stayed with Fru Thøgersen (Ghita Nørby) when he ended his run waiting to go back to Oslo. It never occurs to him that he can visit without a reason now.When he goes on a ride with Dr. Sissener (Espen Skjønberg), and he dies behind the wheel, he just takes the dog and goes home. He doesn't show any emotion. He doesn't have any attachments except to his mother (Bjørn Floberg), who is in a home.The score is magnificent, and the cinematography is excellent. Skjønberg is a real delight.I have to say that there are some strange characters in Norway, if this film is to be believed.It has a surprise, but happy ending, as Odd finally takes the leap and finds that life truly is worth living.

Chris Knipp In Norwegian director Bent Hamer's third film to be seen Stateside (following 'Kitchen Stories' and 'Factotum'), a man named Odd Horton (Baard Owe) retires after 40 years as a train conductor. His face is as wrinkled as scrunched-up parchment, but he's erect and vigorous enough. What the heck is he going to do now? Clair Denis' wonderful '35 Shots of Rum' (whose US release is coming later this year) also begins with the idea that without tracks and timetables to show him the way a railroad engineer who's put out to pasture may be particularly lost, as wage earners go, even desperate. Denis' is an ensemble film full of warmth and connectedness, but sad for the conductor. Horton, who's odd, alright, maintains a Nordic blankness we never penetrate, but -- sadly, it seemed to me -- his meanderings end happily enough. After enduring so much wry tedium one would like to have been rewarded with a little more pessimism.Because he's a solitary who keeps a bird in a cage, which he covers when he goes out, Horton gives a momentary hint of Alain Delon's lonely samurai in Jean-Pierre Melville's classic noir. One may also contrast Horton's dry world with the garish and curiously tonic pessimism of Islandic helmer Aki Kaurismaki, who concluded his "Loser Trilogy" with 'The Lights of the City,' which records the downfall of a pathetic loser who becomes a would-be gangster, an utterly failed samurai. Horton, perhaps unwittingly, flouts convention and even breaks the law. When he loses the way back to his retirement celebration he winds up breaking and entering, he flees from lesbian lovers who interrupt his midnight swim wearing the high heels of one of them, and he abandons a corpse in a car. To please his near-catatonic aged mother, whose only response when he visits her is a smile he does not see when he refers in leaving to her youthful prowess as a ski jumper, he steals a pair of old skis and for the first time in his life does some late night ski-jumping of his own. Earlier, he consents to ride with a very odd man (odder than Odd) who claims he knows how to drive blindfolded, again at night, in a classic Citroen DS.Some of the dry jokes seem gratuitous. Odd habitually dines alone in an old-fashioned restaurant. The cook is taken out in handcuffs by police and the waiter, a wrinkled-faced Buser Keaton type just like Horton, announces to the room, "Of course don't expect me to take any more food orders." What are we to make of the old man who keeps coming back into the tobacco shop to ask for matches, because he keeps losing them? At moments that might be stressful Horton, like Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot, takes out his pipe and lights it, or taps it on the bottom of his shoe. Bur Oslo is a whole galaxy away from the South of France.Hamer's film takes a long time to get started. In fact it's hard to say when it does begin. Many tedious long shots of trains, tracks, and snow have to be got through before Horton finally loses his way, and something begins to happen. Maybe it's when he oversleeps in a little boy's room and just misses his last train run, that we know his new life, or a transition into it, has finally begun. His decision to sell a boat leads to a long series of wild goose chases at an exaggeratedly Kafkaesque airport where he is repeatedly searched and run through scanners. Is Hamer comparing modes of transport, and suggesting the more old-fashioned ones are preferable? The railroad will work for 40 years, a Citroen is good for a deadly ride, a streetcar will do in a pinch, a boat was once okay -- but airplanes, never, ever? All of a sudden his adventures and misadventures are over, Horton's doffed his trainman's uniform, donned comfortable-looking civvies, and there he is, still in a train station, but settling down to a good life (for the first time, perhaps?) with a good woman. He seems to have replaced that spooky chirping bird with the dead man's cuddly dog.Hamer's episodic structure here might owe something to Swedish director Roy Andersson, whose 'You, the Living' I saw in Rome two years ago after its release in the film festival there. Andersson's elaborate set pieces, triumphant celebrations of gloom, sparkle and charm, however, while Hamer's mises-en-scene are relatively flat and conventional. A film like 'O'Horton' must repay patience; it is unwatchable without it. We are never allowed into the mind or emotions of its protagonist. The wry humor, the missteps that lead to reassuring choices, hardly justify the slow, uneven pacing. 'Factotum' remains Hamer's best effort so far. It doesn't go anywhere, but neither do the books of Charles Bukowski, from which it's drawn.