A Little Trip to Heaven

A Little Trip to Heaven is an Icelandic-American noir-inspired drama and thriller film from 2005, directed by Icelandic director of The Sea, Baltasar Kormákur. The film is set in the U.S. in 1985 but almost entirely shot in Iceland. Icelandic musician Mugison composed and performed the soundtrack, except for the song "A Little Trip to Heaven," which is originally by Tom Waits. Mugison performs the Waits song on the soundtrack.

Plot

The very beginning of the film, before the opening credits, shows a new widow sitting in a life insurance office. Expecting to be compensated for her husband's death, the widow is informed that she is not entitled to full death benefits because the insurance company has captured footage of her husband smoking and attributes cigarettes to his death. Abe Holt looks on as his co-worker convinces the widow that she's lucky to leave with a small fraction of the award she was expecting.

The film centers around three vehicle crashes, which are first introduced to the viewer one after another at the very beginning of the movie. The first shows a young couple flying through the open roof of their convertible, which has been ejected over a cliff. They swim to shore, where the woman hits the leg of her fellow passenger with a pipe. The second involves a city bus and insurance adjustor Abe Holt (Forest Whitaker), who has arrived at the scene on the suspicion that many of the passengers boarded the bus after the accident, looking to file a claim. Holt bluffs, claiming a hidden camera will help sort out who was truly on the bus; many leave, and his co-worker (Peter Coyote) quickly tells him their company wants him to investigate a crash in the remote and desolate town of North Hastings, Minnesota.