An unusual expedition here for Netflix, unusual less for the nature of the expedition itself and more for its ambition, a rare film for streamers that allows us to travel with characters to real location, a world away from green screens and sound scenes. It shouldn’t be such a unique selling point, but in an era of modestly priced budgets set for the smallest screens, the clear space on earth of an old-fashioned ice survival adventure immediately sets it apart from many other movies landing or most often emergency landing on the platform.
This is a vital separation from his contemporary streaming counterparts, as compared to the big-screen films that have previously appeared in this particular genre, it is a familiar story, told well, but with very little distinctive flair. This is a passionate project for Game of Thrones alumnus Nikolai Koster-Waldau, co-author and Danish researcher Einar Mikkelsen, but this passion is mostly restrained on screen, a polite, ordinary story about men who they beat the elements that should satisfy those looking for a simple, healthy drama to return to. Those hoping for something extra will feel a little cold.
This is the true story of the Danish expedition to Greenland in 1909 to disprove the Americans’ claims to the Northeast based on the belief that it had been divided into separate pieces of land. Captain Mickelsen (who in real life would have been only 29 at the time, a slight difficulty for the 51-year-old Koster-Waldau) is following in the footsteps of an unfortunate previous attempt to find the bodies or discoveries of the men who came before them. To make the final voyage, he must leave his crew on the ship and fight the extremes, a 400-mile return trip that will require a partner. The only volunteer is the mechanic Iver (Joe Cole), inexperienced but impatient, so they leave, aware that they may never return.
But while the characters may risk their lives and bodies to set out into unexplored territory, this is a familiar route for the rest of us. This is mostly pleasant, however, not as captivating as one might think of the intensity of the situation, but charged with almost enough momentum forward to keep us on board. The most effective moments in the film are those that sway on the brink of disaster, a restless tension caused by the knowledge that in a place like this, death is always just a false movement. And it’s not just from falling off the edge of an icy edge or into frozen water (pushed by a rather shoddy-looking CGI bear), but also from ruined or lost supplies, injured or killed snow dogs, the constant fear that something is going to happen. confusion and then everything can be lost.
Adapted from Mickelsen’s posthumously published book (which means we’re never completely in the dark about where we’re headed), Against the Ice is a Danish story flattened to a global audience. It was decided that the characters speak English with different regional British accents, a slightly shocking sacrifice to enlarge the eyeballs, which is a story about an ambitious country that is trying to take steps to end a debate about who what someone else has makes him feel a little confused. There is a similar lack of specificity with much of the dialogue, which at times seems too simplistic and sometimes too modern (did the people in 1909 really ask others to go for a “walk and talk”?).
Like many of his colleagues from Game of Thrones, Koster-Waldau is mostly struggling to find his place outside of Westeros and while he is too old to play Mickelsen (the dramatic change of watching someone in his late 20s -te against the early 50’s struggling with such responsibility is huge), he is looking for an adequate lead, charged mostly to react succinctly to bad things happening. The last action pushes him into a hallucinatory mode to try to bridge the gap between home and away, which leads to an almost unconvincing swing to the finish line. But otherwise it is a satisfactory end to the journey we have taken many times before and will probably take again. Maybe next time it might even be one you really remember.