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Lars Monsen serves us with an amazing story. His brutal Canadian odyssey lasted for almost three years and is probably the longest in modern history not using machine transport. The whole ordeal is truly well told compressed into a mere three hours.

He did almost the entire trip by dog sled. In a video-blog sort of format, we get to experience fine wilderness, turmoil inside tents out in extreme arctic lands where it is -70 effective degrees, and also the exploration of cultures and traditions in Canadian arctic and subarctic villages. Quite some humor and more or less subtle oddities are mixed in by the great Monsen, making the final story very enjoyable and relaxing to watch.

Extraordinary. If you have the least interest in what an Arctic backcountry expedition would be like, or just enjoy a story well told you must watch this.

As an engineer, I must say this show's first season started out very promising. Most of the applied mathematics were somewhat plausible, and the relationships portrayed between the Eppes brothers and father gave the show an interesting edge.

But after the first season, the show started degrading, heavily. Most of the mathematics and technology used in crime solving is now utter gibberish and very laughable to all people involved in science & technology for real.

The involvement from the actors still feels okay and I can imagine a fair amount of money is still going into producing each episode, but in the end, this has degraded to a very unpleasantly tasting dish which is a mix of a grade C action thriller and CSI style cop show.

If you are gonna watch it, go for only the first season and possibly parts of the second. Thereafter I would not waste my time. Myself, I gave the show up midway through season 3.

Season 1 - 8 stars Season 2 - 5 stars Season 3 - 3 stars

Let's sum that up to 4 stars. Since Charlie doesn't know his math anymore, I won't bother with the correctness of mine either.

Being a wilderness hiker, and fan of wilderness biographies and true stories, like "Into The Wild" and "Alone In The Wilderness", IMDb thought this would be a good fit for me. It was absolutely right.

One of the must brutal and gut-wrenching drama documentaries I have seen, ALIVE delivers on most points. If the boys have told the truth about their deal with the Andes, this film is about 95% consistent with what actually occurred for real (just a couple of petty details dramatized; I have read the book as well).

However, the acting is a bit weak. This story seriously deserved better. Ethan Hawke, who plays the important figure Parrado, does a good job, as well as Josh Hamilton (Canessa), but those two are exceptions. I'd actually go as far as saying that in some scenes, the dead people are the best actors. Also, the narrator who opens up the film does not fit in, feels emotionless and not at all believable.

But all in all, it's a story worth to catch up on, fairly well told in its film format. Beautiful scenery, unbelievable courage, poetic, absolutely excellent soundtrack by James N. Howard. Simply put, see it. You might become very tempted to read the book afterwards. I am looking forward to a remake in HD with even better actors and graphics. 8/10