North Star

Sorry friends this is a frozen turkey; just it's an interesting turkey courtesy of Caan & Young. Years back they made two superior films- The Gambler & The Killer Elite. It's nice to seem them looking so good 25 years later even considering the material.

When the movie starts I started to think of Jimmy Stewart & Walter Brennan in The Far Country. Afterwards, Valdez is Coming. By the end it just freezes to death of its own weight. It's supposed to showcaset this Highlander guy but he doesn't even rise to the level of Steven Seagal.

I laughed and enjoyed Caan as a ruthless businessman turned psycho killer but somewhere Sonny Corleone is shaking his head. John McIntire too.

In Nome, Alaska, in the 1890s, the mining claim of Hudson Saanteek, deceased, is being auctioned off, only he's not really dead. Hudson is a 'half-breed' who wants to preserve land that belongs to the Indians who raised him. Meanwhile, Swedish immigrant Bjorn Svenson wants to claim the land where he has been mining for months, but immigrants are not allowed to have claims. He has to appeal to Sean McLennon, who seems to make the rules in this town and has plenty of money but could always use more. McLennon won't listen, because he despises immigrants as well as half-breeds, and anyone who stands in his way. Later, one of these two problems is dealt with by a kidnapping, and so begins a wintry wilderness adventure.

If you like scenes of sled dogs racing through the snow, this movie may be for you (though this wouldn't have been my first choice; it just happened to be on TV). There's lots of excitement once the adventure gets going, and some strange plot twists. James Caan made a deliciously evil and almost comical villain, at least at first. Later, he was just plain mean. The Indians talked mostly in a native language, which added to the realism, and I think most of them gave good performances. One Indian woman never said a word, and yet she could show emotion just with her face, even with very little movement. And one dog, who was listed in the credits as a wolf, even seemed to have a personality. Reidar Sorenson was also quite good as Bjorn, with a style that made me wonder if he has done Shakespeare.

Still, this is not that special, and maybe there have been movies like this which were done better.

Had "North Star" been made in the 1940's or 1950's and had starred John Wayne or Charlton Heston, it would have been hailed as an exciting wilderness adventure, featuring excellent chase sequences and solid characters. However, it was made in 1995, and while the story had a good deal of potential as a great, if mindless, adventure story, it unfortunately is too tame for modern viewers. They will probably be either very bored or just not interested. While the characters are effective and the story is loaded with some great stuff, it simply pales to films of its kind, including "Cliffhanger" and "White Fang."

That said, the cast is excellent, if a little miscast. James Caan is the villian, a man maddened by the isolated confounds of Nome Alaska. Having lived there for many years, I knew many people in his situation, and he does as a good a job as possible showing the effects such desolate surroundings can have on the human spirit. He nails the performance and shows why he's the celebrated actor that he is, and he makes dialogue such as "Nobody dies until I tell them to die!" sound miraculously believable.

Christopher Lambert also brings passion to the role of the half-breed Indian who is trying to protect his land from Caan. While it is obviously a miscast (he's part Eskimo like I'm Clark Gable!), he does a commendable job as a man torn between loyalties, protecting a land from a native people who don't necessarily trust him. I don't think he was the ideal choice for the role, simply because he's obviously French, but the subtly and haunted characteristics that he demonstrates here shows a great deal of flair and concern for making this film work.

Between he and Caan, not to mention an altogether underused Catherine McCormick, they almost manage to lift this tame adventure story above standards. Unfortunately, good perfomances can't save it. Only style and more over-the-top actions scenes would have, and that is where the movie is lacking. Still, it's not a bad film to watch during the dog-days of summer for a little pick-me-up.

**1/2 out of ****

North Star is unique for a European western in that it's set in Alaska, far from the sun baked deserts of the southwest. Everything else is disappointingly typical.

Caan plays a black-hearted land baron in 1899 Alaska who's systematically murdered and cheated his way into being the owner of the largest goldmines in the area. He tries to kill Lambert, a half Eskimo who had the good sense to file a claim on his people's sacred (and gold rich) cave.

It isn't boring but a chase movie where Christopher Lambert squares off against James Caan and Burt Young in a savage frontier battle for survival should have generated more heat than this, especially being that this is co-written by Sergio Donati, who also helped pen For A Few Dollars More and Once Upon A Time In The West!

It's pretty straight forward and unpretentious but it made me wish it were more compelling. The characters were pretty cardboard, though Caan seems to be having some fun swinging back and forth between greedy and treacherous to insane and out of control.

Also, everyone appears to be under-dressed. This movie takes place in Nome, Alaska during a snowstorm but everyone's dressed like it's Fall.

Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson were better in Death Hunt, watch that one first!

Businessman Sean McLennon is the president of the miners union. He has banned all non-Americans from staking claim to the land. Moreover he is killing off people in order to then buy their claims at auction. However when his men only wound Saanteek and kill an old Indian, Saanteek returns to take revenge on McLennon and to protect his land.

Why did I bother to tape this film? The film industry is a funny thing isn't it – James Caan was at his peak in Godfather and Rollerball, while Lambert had his `peak' with Highlander – but now they both wind up in this, although for Lambert he hasn't fallen too far. The story here is very basic and starts out very dry. Unfortunately it stays that way. The characters never get interesting and the plot never ever gets any tension involved at any level. The way the ending is forced into a face off is clumsy and typical of the whole film.

Caan is OK because he never seems to take it totally seriously – certainly the plot `twists' around his character are impossible to accept without laughing. Lambert is terrible – he seems to be saying all his lines through gritted teeth as if he has his jaw wired up! The rest of the cast are also poor but the leads being bad distract from that. The cast is wooden and even then they are put to shame by the wooden sets being better than them. The sets and costumes are good and set the period well – shame the film lets them down.

Overall this is totally lacking in interest, plot, characters and any sort of action or tension whatsoever. It's not total rubbish it's just made with no conviction, no passion and is worse than bad – it's just barely mediocre.