Movie Thoughts: Against the Ice (2022)

• Released: 2 March 2022
• Directed by: Peter Flinth
• Running time: 1 h 42 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

Two Danish explorers, a ship captain and a rookie mechanic, get left behind during their trip to Greenland and must now find a way to survive.

My Thoughts

Hey look, this movie came out on my birthday!

Ended up watching this one on a whim since I do want to watch something other than animation or animal-centric movies now and then. So how's this one hold up?

Pretty damn good. I didn't even know this was based on a real story at first, but this movie definitely made me want to look into the real events and also just was pretty damn solid.

The characters were good. We honestly spend 90% of our time in the movie with only two characters, but they are great characters. Not always perfectly likable, but they feel very realistic, especially after they've been stuck in such a situation for a long time. I liked Ejnar and Iver and really rooted for them, especially after Ejnar starts to slowly start slipping mentally after being left behind in Greenland twice, to the point he starts to pose a threat to his only companion.

The environments also looked great, as did the effects. The CGI on the polar bear could've used a little more work but otherwise everything looked pretty damn good.

Finally, yes, there is some dog-sledding in this movie (which I bring up because I've reviewed like a dozen dog-sledding movies in the past) but it's really not a major factor. Also, please don't watch this if you can't watch animal death, because literally all of the dogs die earlier or later. 

Definitely a pretty damn strong movie.