Critic Reviews
49
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
3(33%)
mixed
5(56%)
negative
1(11%)
Showing 9 Critic Reviews
75
Throw in the striking underwater photography and Michel Legrand's big score, and I don't understand why more critics don't dig Ice Station Zebra. Even director John Carpenter calls it a guilty pleasure. [14 Jan 2005, p.H22]
70
Action develops slowly, alternating with some excellent submarine interior footage, and good shots – of diving, surfacing and maneuvering under an ice field.
70
Grand adventure yarn, based on an Alistair MacLean verbal comic strip about a Cold War race to grab some top secrets from an Arctic weather post. Like the nuclear submarine on which it's mostly set, the film cracks, leaks but finally stands the strain and has weathered well. [03 Feb 2008, p.2]
60
Ice Station Zebra is a fairly tight, exciting, Saturday night adventure story that suddenly goes all muddy in its crises, so that at two crucial points—when water comes rushing into a submarine under the polar ice cap, and when somebody is substituting something for the object everybody is searching for—it is very difficult to know what is going on, or who knows what about it. It doesn't make much difference, though.
60
A dated but still serviceable Cold War thriller about a US nuclear sub racing the Russians to the North Pole to retrieve some film from a downed Soviet satellite. [19 Jun 2010, p.26]
60
John Sturges directed this overlong but intermittently entertaining action-thriller. [24 Jul 2002, p.2]
60
Intrigue comes in epic proportions in this US versus Russia arctic battle.
40
Overlong, it'll most likely try the patience of audiences now accustomed to a bit more bang for their buck, but it's a great deal of fun for those with a penchant for old-style action.
25
Ice Station Zebra is a movie so flat and conventional that its three moments of interest are an embarrassment.
