User Reviews

It's a very bland, uninspired survival film that is a dime a dozen. Coster-Waldau tries and, tbh, he is the only reason I even gave this a shot. There's just no substance to it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I love slow tempo of this movie but if you don't - it's probably not for you.

The story it is based on of course is intriguing and interesting, but in movie format feels like something is missing. It feels a bit boring at times - I think they made it because the story of course is fascinating and trying to rely on it, not thinking that in movie it does mostly look like they only walking and maybe you don't feel the dramatization at times. It is decent movie, but not memorable enough, I think books it is based on would be better.

As a historical adventure drama, it is not entirely effective in all the footage; at times it feels very slow although little by little from less to more. Only if all the good options have already been seen.

Against the Ice is a typical production that has a fascinating true story that would have been interesting to read in a history book, but didn't necessarily need to be made into a film, and the results prove it. Faced with a considerable lack of options, the film stalls when there is nowhere to go and the last 40 minutes are unproductive and exhausting. Therefore, its third act is mediocre and that leads to a more than unsatisfactory conclusion. The performances of the two main actors are solid, but that only helps to keep the film from going completely off the rails. Modestly average and that hardly gives it the arguments to deserve your attention.

Ice This is based on Denmark's expedition in the early 1900s to prove that Greenland was one land mass and avoid the US claim to the land. Two explorers (Joe Cole and Nikolau Coster-Waldau, who alo co-wrote) set out to discover the evidence, but not before the inevitable setbacks. Their perilous journey covers the first half of the story, but personal drama dominates, as they continue their struggle to survive in isolation. Considering that this is based on real events, their endurance is incredible. As for the film, the director Peter Flinth stages the "action" scenes with competence, but there's never much fear for their lives (except one dog). Given the challenges of the period, this proves a fascinating history lesson, but doesn't ever generate much emotion.

A terribly boring movie, who is a flop for me despite good cast. The director and his people still have to learn a lot.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Excellent visual component. Nice actors. In general, this movie is great for an evening pastime.

The takeaway from Against the Ice is that not all CGI is bad – which doesn’t necessarily mean that some of it is good, only that some examples are comparatively worse than others. There is a scene in this movie that will remind you of The Revenant, except that the bear in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film is one of its most memorable aspects; as for the one in Against the Ice, let’s just say that I’ve seen more realistic bears in those Coca-Cola Christmas ads. Now, both scenes involve lots of computer generated imagery and a stuntman pretending to be a carnivoran mammal of the family Ursidae, so the difference between awesome and pathetic lies in the performance of the actor being attacked; like in pro wrestling, the encounter between Leo DiCaprio and the bear may not have been spontaneous, and its outcome may have been predetermined, but that doesn’t mean the actor didn’t take an actual beating, getting thrown around to and fro like a ragdoll by way of wires; moreover, all of his facial and body language is committed to selling the gravity of the situation, which in turn makes the bear, CGI or not, look like a million dollars. Meanwhile in Against the Ice, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau pretty much just lies there and takes it, bringing no urgency to what should be a life-and-death struggle. This scene is symptomatic of Against the Ice, which is no less a collection of clichés than The Revenant, but whereas the latter amounts to much more than the sum of its parts thanks to superb execution, the former is too conventional to ever transcend its chosen genre. Consider the way it tracks the passage of time beginning with “Day 1”, which is of course a logical starting point, but also a very obvious one; from there it skips all the way to “Day 26” – my question is, since apparently nothing of note happened in the first 25 days, why not just start with the 26th day and go from there? All things considered, no one will be surprised to learn that Ejnar Mikkelsen (Coster-Waldau) – on whose book (or, presumably, a translation of the same, seeing as how the Danish characters all speak English as a first language) the movie is based – and Iver Iverson (Joe Cole) “remained friends for life”, but don’t they always? Just like Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in the King’s Speech, or Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in Green Book. All movies “based on a true story” take extreme liberties with their source material, and I usually hate it when they do, but Against the Ice would have been considerably less trite if the makers had gone the opposite route with the characters’ relationship; after all, in the words of Mr. Burns following a similar but by no means as protracted ordeal, “once you've been through something like that with a person, you never want to see that person again.”

Against the Ice wanted us to take it seriously but it was hard to do so with the amateurish writing and lagging runtime.

(Mauro Lanari) Insipid Netflix pastime produced by Kormákur who relaunches after his 2015 "Everest". It makes you regret anything filmed by Herzog with or without Kinski.

Can recommend. Try it out if you are in the mood for a drama. Was neither crazy good but also not bad.