Her sister Asa (played by the same actress - and the scenes where Asa and Halla are both on screen are seamlessly done) comes in and out of the story, as does cousin Sveinbjorn (Johann Sigurdarson), a farmer who helps Halla at critical moments.

Her motivation for what she's doing also would not cut very deep unless we had a well rounded picture of her life and the deep connection of her fellow Icelanders with their own land. Will Halla keep successfully evading the authorities who are ramping up their search for the saboteur? After all, Iceland is a pretty small country. There actually aren't that many true 'action' scenes: most of the screen time is devoted to interactions among the relatively small cast of characters, and some slow-burn suspense. We care about what's going on on the screen, and about the protagonist Halla, far more here than we ever would for things like Mission Impossible or Fast and Furious or the Bond films or a dozen other franchises like them which are basically just eye candy. The bare bones of this plot sound like just the sort of thing for a Hollywood action film, but Woman at War is stylistically so different, so NOT Hollywood that it inhabits practically a different universe. Her weapons of choice are small-scale explosives, and bow and arrows. Staying completely off the radar, she conducts lone daring missions of sabotage against a big industrial plant that is endangering the environment of her region and her entire country.

Halla (played by Halldora Geirhardsdottir), a middle-aged Icelandic woman leading a seemingly ordinary life, is secretly a fierce eco-warrior.

Female war lousy deal cast