Auf Leben und Tod

Too many movies about being lost in the Arctic are Disneyized views of playing in the snow, waiting for the inevitable rescue. This movie shows the real dangers of hypothermia, dehydration, frostbite and isolation, and the hopelessness of waiting for rescue if no one knows you're lost.

Otherwise known as "Almost too late" this based on a true story tale see's a families boat capsize. They are forced to seek refuge on an island but as the cold sets in it becomes increasingly difficult to stay alive.

I'm always sceptical of true stories, chances are at least half of it is untrue and/or exaggerated.

Starring Matt "Friends" LeBlanc and Emily "Gingersnaps" Perkins this is some really made for tv stuff. It looks passable, the writing is mostly okay but the whole thing just comes across painfully generic.

Alas the further in the movie goes the more it starts to trail off and by the end I didn't find myself caring quite as much as I'm sure I was supposed to.

For fans of these cheesy made for tv efforts you can do worse but this is hardly a movie worth most folks time.

The Good:

Perkins is a solid actress

The Bad:

Generic stuff

Ending is questionable

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Before he was famous Matt LeBlanc was known as Matthew LeBlanc, edgy!

This is quite a good TV movie of a family stranded in cold alaska. The father and son go looking for help and the two sisters cant do anything but wait to live or wait to die. The older sister eats cold seaweed with worms it in. Worth watching about once.

A Canadian-American disaster survival TV film drama; A story about a carpenter and his teenage children who spend weeks ashore freezing and starving, shipwrecked off Alaska. The film is based on the ordeal of an author and his three teenaged children in the winter of 1979. The film's theme about the power of positivity matches what the coastguards believed helped them. It creates sufficient tension and has a good enough story and the performances of the cast are good, portraying the family members and the mistakes they believed they were making to do the right thing.

Matt LeBlanc was so fantastic and memorable in this great, living-it-as-you're-watching-it, movie. As I understand it, this movie is what basically launched his career, and I can see why.