Nova Zembla - Unbekanntes Land

Making a movie about such a 'big' event in Dutch history seems like a very good idea. But, after sitting down for sometime in the cinema i started to get bored. Then more bored and eventually I couldn't take anymore boredom and had to get up and leave the cinema. This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time! The storyline is disappointing, and doesn't seem to follow a clear path. The Characters are shallow, and the actors seem to take no effort to give some depth to their character. This would be a hard task anyway, since the conversations between the actors are so weak that it would be a big effort to make anything worthwhile come out.

The gorgeous Doutzen Kroes makes her first movie appearance with a weak performance. I am a big movie fan, but this one, in spite of all the buzz in the Netherlands, is best to avoid!

There are a lot of things that can be said about this (typically Dutch) movie. Without a doubt, the adventures of Willem Barentz during his third voyage to find a way around "the North" and his stay on Nova Zembla merited an epic movie.

Even though Reinout Oerlemans is a very inexperienced director the quality of the production is mostly "acceptable". Great camera-work in general and pretty decent acting.

The biggest problem with the movie, however, is the script.

It deviates from what really happened in so many places it defies belief. Why Reinout Oerlemans and Hugo Heinen would have strayed so far from the truth is difficult to understand as much of the real story would have added to the tension.

They completely missed the reason for Barentz to become stuck in the ice contrary to his previous two attempts in sailing through the arctic, for instance. There are many more examples of "truth is stranger than fiction" to be found in this movie.

In the end the movie is dull and not very engaging. Constantly giving the viewer the sense of missed opportunities by the script.

The true story of Willem Barentz' voyage could easily have beaten "Titanic" in terms of suspense and majesty. Instead, this attempt can only be called a mediocre, unnecessary and (in places) simpleminded distortion of reality.

a good story, great ambitions of director, a shallow movie.and everybody is innocent. because desire to create a blockbuster was so great but details are ignored. to present a page of history is not an easy mission. and it is first sin of this project. a huge mountain and an army of Liliputans. and, for make the business more complicated - usual 3 D which, in this case,a real burden. it is not a bad film but only smoke of expensive cigar.because,wanting to tell all, it fails to provide anything. old clichés, dusty characters,great adventure without any crumb of emotion. so, second sin of movie is to create expectations. the last sin - Doutzen Kroes. beautiful, charming, she is only chain for too heavy pendant.

it is strange to define it. it is a homage to pioneers of geographic adventure, a history lesson, an inspired trip at the true essence of adventure, not ignoring the portrait of noble heroism ,but giving a realistic story . sure, using the precise expectations about artistic virtues, it is far to be a great movie. but it is a decent one. and this fact remains a significant good point. or,maybe, a reasonable portrait of brave men and theirs fight against nature.

The movie starts interesting and one might be hoping for an interesting adventure. But unfortunately it totally breaks down. Nothing is happening anymore, it gets only extremely boring and predictable. All the characters are so blunt and uninteresting. You do not care at all for the characters and approximately in the middle you just start to skip further and further and still, you do not miss anything. I do not want to spoil something here, but the ending is totally predictable and cliche. No character development at all, it is really sad to produce something like that. It should have been totally foreseeable, just by reading the script to understand, that this can only go south (although they are going north actually).