Iceman

When I found this movie I was very curious what kind of story they put forward. Knowing that there is not spoked in a modern language or translated made it even more appealing. However, it turned out to be disappointing.

For the good part, I have to say that I enjoyed how they tried to show how people used to live five millenniums ago. I don't know if it was really like that or not, but I appreciated the attempt. You don't see often that kind of undertaking.

However, the story that unfolded was nothing but modern day Hollywood blockbusters set in another era. Put Tom Cruise in the main role and you have everything. Was that all they could come up with? The hero leaves home and in his absence his entire family gets killed so he sets on a journey of revenge. Liam Neeson could not be more convincing. Of course, we all know what happened to Otzi, although you have to watch the movie to see what led to that.

It's an overall 6 stars from me.

There are several surprises in the story and they don't make sense. In the course of his travels through the Netherlands our hero he was seeking revenge against those who killed his wife/girlfriends/I don't know the relationship because nobody speaks English, this is a movie without dialogue, which has to carry itself just on the effect of the actors upon each other and what they receive from the surrounding cascade. One scene that doesn't understand my comprehension is the same before this. He's traveling along going up a creek bed and then all of a sudden he's gotta goat and I suppose that's to feed the baby that he rescued from the destruction of his village. Now the goat has short-lived necessity as he slaughters it and cooks it and then all of a sudden he has friends that want to eat the goat with him, at this time, the baby that he's been carrying around for about 2/3 of the movie, he palms off on the new friends and he goes looking for revenge against those who killed his family and his village and birth, etc. So he's on the trail of these bad people and for some reason they go over a vast mountain range where there's no shelter no food and no purpose to be there. But his journey goes on to find those bad people and that's all I can say without giving away the ending.

It's not that "Iceman" is a great film - not in the caliber of, say, 'Amadeus' or 'The Godfather' - but it does have its own story to tell, and in a way you won't see that much. At the beginning of the film, there's this disclaimer: "The characters in the following film speak an early version of the Rhaetic language. Translation is not required to comprehend the story." And it's true. 'Iceman' is basically a revenge film akin to almost every Chinese martial arts (Wuxia) movie or even Lone Wolf & Cub. Apart from the scarcity of language, the cinematography of the eastern Alps is breathtaking. You can almost call 'Iceman' neolithic Nordic noir for the blues on display as well as the general moodiness and bleak surroundings. Interesting in this day and age to release a near-silent film, but I think this one works.

This film is important. It has a great perspective and shows you how far we have really come. I great story of evil and good and their coexistence. It actually lowered my anxiety in a weird way. The sound is just fantastic in this film. As well as cinematography and direction and performance. Nothing really bad to say about, its effective and is bare bones story telling. Not pretentiously overlong. I loved it.

Not a bad movie, "Der Mann aus dem Eis" gets weighed down by its "plot" which concentrates on Ötzi's violent death and the days before, creating a murder and revenge story with lots of violence but no levity at all.

The movie gets plus points for trying to get its history right; I liked how it highlights the fact that even then, in the late stone- / early bronze age, humankind was already far removed from the nature it still depended upon. A good idea in this respect were some rituals, plus of course the story's MacGuffin, an obsidian shard used for rituals which is kept in a pretty wooden box.

On the minus side, the amount of violence was maybe historically accurate but if you already go the length of portraying a stone age society halfway correctly (including made-up speech), you might as well include the nicer aspects of human life. A few tender looks and embraces during the first five minutes is all we get.

From the technical POV, the production is OK, out of their limited budget they got everything which could be expected and then some - the sets were fine, the costumes great, casting and acting good (nice lengthy cameo by Franco Nero) and of course the spectacular outdoor locations are an asset. Yet in many instances the camera-work stays rather pedestrian, so while the story shares some genes with "The Revenant", the photography is of lower quality (no big deal, Lubezki is a genius and no mistake). There's only two scenes where the pictures really take flight - one chase along a ridge filmed with a drone or cable-camera against spectacular backdrops, really vertigo-inducing that one - and one lengthy sequence where the hero is trapped in a crevasse below the glacier. Both scenes only emphasize that there was a better movie somewhere but it got buried under a too-simple and violent plot.

Recommended all the same, especially for the realistic portrayal of those early societies.