Odd Horten (Bard Owe) isn't the first 67-year-old Norwegian to feel restless in retirement. But he is an Oslo man whose solitary life and routines have been shaped and driven by schedules.

He is a train engineer who lives next to the tracks and as he makes and packs coffee and lunch, covers his squawking bird's cage and sits with his ever-present pipe, you suspect he has done this hundreds or thousands of times. In just this very way.

Odd, however, is near his final run through the silent, snowy countryside, a run so remote that a coworker says, "I hope we can avoid moose on the tracks tonight. I still have blood on my jacket," from the last mishap.

"O'Horten" tracks Odd's eccentric send-off with his fellow engineers and the way in which his quiet life slips off and then jumps the tracks. Even his regular diversions -- a visit to a tobacco shop, a sauna and swim -- take quirky, unexpected turns.

Maybe a newfound friend is correct when he suggests, "It seems most everything comes too late in life, doesn't it?" Perhaps not, though, as "O'Horten" builds to Odd taking a mental, emotional and physical leap of faith.

Writer-director Bent Hamer, who also made "Factotum," "Kitchen Stories" and "Eggs," has a fondness for curious characters and a vivid eye for color, framing and music that make most scenes pop just a bit. He says in the press notes that Horten isn't really that peculiar "when seen through Norwegian eyes." He's a little bit odd, a man who keeps a shy distance.

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'O'Horten'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Bard Owe.
• Rating: PG-13 for brief nudity. In Norwegian, with English subtitles.
• Web site: www.sonyclassics.com/ohorten/

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Horten lives to work and when his job disappears, due to age-mandated retirement, he is lost. Or is he unshackled?

It's all quietly quirky and comic but enjoyable (except for a few lines of white dialogue on a white background that are impossible to read). "O'Horten" was Norway's official entry for the Oscar for foreign language film but it didn't make the final nine, probably because it's too whimsical.

Odd may be a cautionary tale or a fictional Norwegian role model who proves what former President George H.W. Bush said after skydiving on his 85th birthday: "Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner. Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life."

A message that resonates in any language.

Opens Friday at the Harris, Downtown.