A Little Trip to Heaven

R

2005

1 hr. 27 min.

Comedy

Drama

List

33%

6 Reviews

Tomatometer

41%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Insurance investigator Abraham Holt (Forest Whitaker) travels to a tiny town in rural Minnesota to look into a particularly unusual insurance claim stemming from a horrific car accident. As Holt examines the scene of the wreck, it all seems a bit too perfect. And when he interviews Isold Mcbride (Julia Stiles) and her shifty husband, Fred (Jeremy Renner) -- the impoverished beneficiaries of the massive, recently initiated life-insurance policy -- he begins to suspect that something is amiss.

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ronald h

_A Little Trip to Heaven_ is a quirky noir film that's neither great nor terrible, but it's surely inexplicable. Forrest Whitaker plays Holt, an insurance adjuster investigating a fatal car accident in snowy rural Minnesota in the 1980's. He drives an AMC Pacer (When's the last time you saw one of those in a movie?) and harbors the whitest, most fake midwestern accent imaginable. We see the accident early in the film. Fred, (Jeremy Renner) picks up a hitchhiker and wrecks the car deliberately. He has set things up so that the hitchhiker is injured but Renner escapes. He sets the car on fire and the hitchhiker burns to a crisp. The cops ID the corpse as Kelvin, Fred's brother-in law, who has a million dollar policy on his life---and the beneficiary is Fred's wife Isold (played by the always unlikeable Julia Stiles). But of course, the corpse is not Kelvin. The intrepid Holt investigates the scam, and I won't get into spoilers. Let's just say all is not what it seems. And the ending of this film is beyond ridiculous. The cinematography is quite good, creating a dismal mood and making you wonder why anybody would want to live in rural Minnesota. But that ending…….Well, at least the Pacer survived. I always thought they were cute little cars.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This film was pretty dull.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

02/20/23

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Audience Member

A pile of complete trash from a director who usually doesn't miss this mark... Especially by this much.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

02/21/23

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Audience Member

This movie is great visually as a noir thriller but fails pretty much in every other department. The Midwest looks like a foreign land (not surprisingly since it was filmed in Iceland) but that's not the biggest problem. The story is clumsy, lacking logic and plausibility, the "plot twist" is given away early on so it doesn't even work as a suspense thriller, and the ending is ridiculously corny. A decent noir thriller was lost somewhere on its way to the screen.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

02/09/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A little trip to boredom.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/03/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Forest Whitaker is wonderful as usual, but the movie as a whole wasn't as good.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

Full Review

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Baltasar Kormákur

Director

Forest Whitaker

Holt

Julia Stiles

Isold

Jeremy Renner

Fred

Peter Coyote

Frank

Philip Jackson

William

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Kirk Honeycutt

Hollywood Reporter

Kormakur, who directed and co-wrote the script with Edward Martin Weinman, falls short in the story department and even shorter in evoking the droll, twisted humor that must carry the day.

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

Jon Popick

Planet S Magazine

This is a very dark, very pretty picture (photographed by ttar Gunason) that has little else to offer, and its ending, at least for my taste, was a little corny.

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

Boyd van Hoeij

european-films.net

The director also has a strong visual sense, turning the barren wastelands of Minnesota into the visual equivalent of the Reagan era of corporate greed in which the story is set.

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

David Nusair

Reel Film Reviews

...needlessly arty...

Rated: 1.5/4

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

Jeremy Mathews

Film Threat

A stylish film that captures the bleak gloom of a desolate town and contrasts it with a satire of insurance commercials that concentrate on happy, sunny days -- not the ones that require insurance

Rated: 4/5

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

Kevin Courrier

Boxoffice Magazine

The pacing makes you feel like you're trudging through the snow.

Rated: 2/5

Nov 4, 2006

Full Review

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Synopsis

Insurance investigator Abraham Holt (Forest Whitaker) travels to a tiny town in rural Minnesota to look into a particularly unusual insurance claim stemming from a horrific car accident. As Holt examines the scene of the wreck, it all seems a bit too perfect. And when he interviews Isold Mcbride (Julia Stiles) and her shifty husband, Fred (Jeremy Renner) -- the impoverished beneficiaries of the massive, recently initiated life-insurance policy -- he begins to suspect that something is amiss.

Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Screenwriter: Baltasar Kormákur, Edward Martin Weinman
Production Co: Palomar Pictures
Rating: R (Some Violence|Language|Disturbing Images)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): May 22, 2017
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

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