Iceland's Most Wanted

It's incomprehensible to me that Baltasar Kormakur's "Jar City," which begins a one-week engagement today at IFC Center, has become one of Iceland's biggest box office hits of all time, mainly because it makes Icelanders look like a bunch of creeps. So dirty and unshaven that you can practically smell their rancid, unwashed sweaters, the cops, criminals, junkies, and thieves of this 2006 film are either raping people and beating each other up or eating fresh eyeballs and tongues from the "Sheep's Head To Go" take-out window. With its thick smear of religious symbolism, nonstop chanting choruses on the soundtrack, anti-science subtext, and aerial shots of the blasted Icelandic countryside, it's the kind of fire and brimstone movie a 17th-century Puritan might make.

Erlendur (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) is a grizzled, middle-age police inspector called in to investigate a typically squalid murder. As the nice, neat crime scene unravels, it turns out to be linked to a past gang rape and a rare neurological disorder. As Erlendur drives all over Iceland interviewing various depressing people, a doctor is stalking people who have the genetic abnormality. Apparently, genetic mapping will lead to medical professionals trying to cure diseases by killing all the people who have them; so, you see, DNA testing will lead us into temptation.

Full of chain-smoking pregnant women, unshaven porn freaks, and drunk cops with food stuck in their beards, "Jar City" looks like it was cast entirely with the residents of the Bowery Men's Shelter. It's a sharp little thriller, but on the big screen, with its looming close-ups of every broken blood vessel, stained sweater, and yellowing tooth, it plays more like a horror movie.

Through March 4 (323 Sixth Ave. at West 3rd Street, 212-924-7771).