A Little Trip to Heaven

A Little Trip to Heaven
A Little Trip to Heaven Promotional Movie Poster
Directed by	Baltasar Kormákur
Produced by	Sigurjón Sighvatsson Baltasar Kormákur
Written by	Edward Martin Weinman Baltasar Kormákur
Starring	Forest Whitaker Julia Stiles Jeremy Renner Peter Coyote
Music by	Mugison
Cinematography	Óttar Guðnason
Edited by	Richard Pearson
Distributed by	First Look Studios
Release date	26 December 2005 (Iceland)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	Iceland United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million

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.

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 his death to cigarettes. 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.

The third crash involves an unnamed young man who is stranded at the side of the road on a rainy night, after stopping in the local bar. He accepts a ride from the man who has drained his gas tank, who proceeds to speed the car against the wall of a tunnel, injuring his passenger in the wreck. The anonymous man is dragged to the front seat and buckled in before the gas is poured over the car and set ablaze. However, to those who later discover the crash it appears that Kelvin Anderson has died after crashing his own car into the tunnel wall, prompting a spontaneous vehicle fire that burned his body beyond recognition. The local police are convinced it is an open-and-shut case, as Kelvin’s driver's license is found in the glovebox, the plates on the car match Kelvin's, and Kelvin's sister, Isold (Julia Stiles), lives on the other side of the tunnel.