Conquest

I think the main problem here is the directing. The director does not have a lot of experience or talent, and it shows in the movie. The 'making of' segments of this movie, and accounts from the actors, paint a picture of a director who pretty much goes berserk the entire time, and has a directing style that consists mainly of yelling and screaming. The result is that all creative input from a talented cast is killed off right away. It is kind of similar to dominant, loud, and demanding parents, which inevitably produce shy and beaten down kids. Bringing out the best in your actors requires a certain amount of trust. If you ever had a boss who is not in control, and hence wants to control each and every second of your life, you know what the result is. The movie quickly becomes a drag, and I had several instances where I just wanted to walk out. I stayed because of Doutzen Kroes...the question is only: what the heck was she doing in that movie ?

The Age of Exploration (or age of Discovery). Those 200 years (more or less) from 1450 to 1650, when a few brave men coming from Western Europe, traveling in fragile wooden ships and armed with primitive fire weapons, basically conquered the world. It's strange that very few movies have been made out of that era. Perhaps this is so because this era is now a bit politically incorrect (since it many times involved Europeans invading and conquering Native people). But movies dealing with early polar exploration should not have such a problem, since there were few if any native people there. So here comes this fine film from the Netherlands that tells the true story of Willem Barents, the Dutch navigator that seeking a Northern route to China (Spain, being in war with the Netherlands at the time make it difficult for Dutch ships to go to the east through the Cape of Good Hope) reached in 1596 (more than three centuries before the North Pole was reached) the island of Nova Zembla in the High Arctic Sea, an island that is now a part of Russia. However, the ice soon broke the ship and the crew has to spend in the island a harrowing winter. Shot in 3D mostly in Iceland, this film is handsomely made, with a good, classic storytelling. The story is mostly told through the eyes of Gerrit de Veer, the young, inexperienced chronicler in the expedition. Famous Dutch model Doutzen Kroes has a small role, appearing mostly in flashbacks, as Gerrit's fiancé back in Holland (she was obviously hired because she was believed to be a box office draw, not because her character was really needed in the story).

Nova Zembla doesn't hold up to the promises made. In fact, it fails utterly, which, truly, is a shame. An adventurous story, a beautiful setting and (for Dutch standards) good acting but all that cannot make watching this film bearable.

The storytelling is unbelievably slow. While being promised an action-packed heroic story it instead halts drastically every time a little climax should be due, resulting in the opposite. And if your film is to be made for a Dutch audience based on a classic Dutch history lesson almost every Dutch person will remember, you just can't get away with it. Not even with showing random scenes of Doutzen Kroes' breasts.

The cast was fine though and the acting wasn't particularly bad. The lines didn't seem forced and it all had a genuine feel, which is often lacking in Dutch films. The technical side of this film wasn't bad either and the effects, costumes, locations and props are a rare perfect blend.

It is clear this film lacked the experience of a great captain and should be a learning opportunity for inexperienced director Reinout Oerlemans. Nova Zembla fails to hoist the colours and sail full speed ahead and instead feels more like a rowing boat without oars. A typical trailer-beats-film.

a good story, great ambitions of director, a shallow movie.and everybody is innocent. because desire to create a blockbuster was so great but details are ignored. to present a page of history is not an easy mission. and it is first sin of this project. a huge mountain and an army of Liliputans. and, for make the business more complicated - usual 3 D which, in this case,a real burden. it is not a bad film but only smoke of expensive cigar.because,wanting to tell all, it fails to provide anything. old clichés, dusty characters,great adventure without any crumb of emotion. so, second sin of movie is to create expectations. the last sin - Doutzen Kroes. beautiful, charming, she is only chain for too heavy pendant.

The movie starts interesting and one might be hoping for an interesting adventure. But unfortunately it totally breaks down. Nothing is happening anymore, it gets only extremely boring and predictable. All the characters are so blunt and uninteresting. You do not care at all for the characters and approximately in the middle you just start to skip further and further and still, you do not miss anything. I do not want to spoil something here, but the ending is totally predictable and cliche. No character development at all, it is really sad to produce something like that. It should have been totally foreseeable, just by reading the script to understand, that this can only go south (although they are going north actually).