The Great Alone

This film is a great film about survival, about working dogs who are the are on average 10x more physically and psychologically healthy than pet dogs.

Please ignore the sole detracting review from a person who lives in Florida and runs a one person effort to ban dog sledding and who knows nothing about it. Really three dozen dogs have died running the Iditarod since 1993? OMG! But in fact some 10,000 dogs have run that race. Statistically they are safer running that race than in a the urban dog park in Florida! Iditarod dogs have a lower death rate and lower injury rate than human marathon runners

The person running this one person effort admits she has never even been to Alaska to witness an iditorod and is an expert?

Her rantings have been thoroughly debunked. See tinyurl.com/yet89gm and tinyurl.com/y8y9brqd

Great documentary and lesson on never giving up!! Lance has passion and is determined to overcome any obstacle.

This documentary is about a lot more than just a dog sled race. It totally exceeded my expectations.

I love Alaskan scenery and love dogs, so thought I'd give this film a go. Didn't expect this film to be so inspirational!

It's a story about redemption, and a love for family - both the human kind and dogs. Overcoming such challenges such as addiction, broken family bonds, an unforgiving climate, cancer and health issues along the way.

Beautiful cinematography - but it's virtually impossible to make Alaska look ugly anyway!

I lost it at the scene during the 2007 Iditarod when Lance knelt down and thanked each individual dog prior to the finish. His love for his dogs was the highlight of the film.

Definitely recommend!

The movie doesn't give important facts about Lance Mackey. In a recent Iditarod, one of Lance Mackey's male dogs ripped out all of his 16 toenails trying to get to a female who was in heat. This type of broken toenail is extremely painful. Mackey, a four-time Iditarod winner, said he was too stubborn to leave this dog at a checkpoint and veterinarians allowed Mackey to continue to race him. Imagine the agony the dog was forced to endure.

In the 2015 Iditarod, two of Mackey's dogs died. His dog Wyatt died after having been forced to run in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest just weeks before the Iditarod.

Lance Mackey has 120 dogs who are forced to live at the end of short chains. Chaining is cruel, which is why it's been banned or restricted in many places.

Learn more: Sled Dog Action Coalition

This documentary chronicles the story of Lance Mackey, to date the only winner of the Iditarod dog sled race four consecutive years (2007 thru 2010). The Iditarod race is held every March and is over 1.000 grueling miles through the Artic wilderness, beginning in Anchorage and ending in Nome, Alaska, and can take some 8 to 15 days to complete.

Mackey was smitten with the dog sled racing bug ever since he was very young, and especially after seeing his father Dick Mackey win the Iditarod in dramatic fashion, in 1978. However, he would have to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way including his rebellious youth and drug use, the divorce of his parents, and being given little chance to survive a throat cancer operation. Eventually, he would overcome them all and become a champion musher, while achieving lots of notoriety whether he welcomed it or not.

As far as the film itself, it can be disjointed, at times, but does contain some superb cinematography, and, of course, I'm always enamored by those wonderful and loyal sled dogs, to whom Mackey clearly gives much love and attention to.

All in all, I thought this documentary has some drawbacks, but it illustrates the remarkable determination of a man to overcome many challenges, and to be successful at what he loves to do.