Perdus dans l'Arctique

A solid icy wilderness adventure film, based on a true story about a Danish expedition to discover the extent of Greenland. It's not quite up there with Mads Mikkelsen's ARCTIC but it's nonetheless an enduring and very well made production, with a good eye for detail throughout and fine performances from the two leads.

Worth watching to see the limits of human endurance in another era before GPS, mobile phones, modern equipment. It must have been the 1910 equivalent of a trip into outer space . Absorbing film that captured the extreme length of the expedition and what must have been huge monotony without actually being boring.

I'm usually fairly stingy when giving my star ratings, so my 7 star rating here is meant as a high rating when coming from me. I felt the events were mostly realistically portrayed which I appreciated since it's based on a true story. I think Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has a characteristic of likability that makes you root for him even if the characters he plays might normally be hard to side with (similar to Bryan Cranston), and that's helpful in this case. If you like exploration and survival stories this is definitely worth watching.

"Against The Ice" is a movie that explains why Greenland belongs to Denmark and part of it was contested by the Americans. This is the plot and storyline, very simple. Ejnar (played by Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Iver (played by Joe Cole) were real people who embarked on a grim expedition in 1909 to follow up on a previous Danish expedition in 1907. The movie is slow paced but thanks to the cinematography it did not bother me at al. Don´t look forward to great dialogues because the most sound you will hear, will come from the wind howling. The acting performances from Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Joe Cole were very convincing as opposed to the unconvincing CGI polar bears. If you´re a history buff or nature fan, you will definitely like this movie.

It's not an "easy" watch which probably explains most of the low ratings. Ignore them. Watch a well made film with real characters experiencing overwhelming hardships to an ending that . . .

Watch it.