Movie Thoughts: Operation Arctic (2014)

 

• Released: October 17, 2014
  
• Directed by: Grethe Bøe-Waal
• Running time: 1h 27min
• Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

Three siblings, Ida, Julia and Sindre, end up stranded alone in Svalbard. They have to find a way to make contact with the outside world before they die of starvation, exposure or an aggressive polar bear killing them.

My Thoughts

While the poster makes this movie seem at least semi-interesting...it sadly really is not. The premise is simple enough and could definitely make for a good adventure movie. Three kids stuck alone in the frozen north sounds like a concept you could do interesting things with.

But sadly the execution feels very lackluster and just, well, boring. A major cause of this is that the movie feels rather cheap and same-y. This being because 80-90% of the movie takes place in the exact same dull setting, an abandoned cabin in Svalbard. Like I was really expecting these children to make actual journeys and go on various adventures throughout the film, but they mostly just sit around waiting and being hungry at the cabin and do very little of note or interest.

Heck, the only time they do actually venture out to look for help they pretty much don't get anywhere and only end up endangering themselves further. This made the movie all feel very boring and like the scenes blended together after a while. It also didn't help that these kid characters were rather unlikable and at times frankly just stupid. 

And yes, I get it, they're kids, kids make mistakes. But for a movie-going audience you're supposed to still want your hero characters to succeed, right? And some of the things these kids do throughout the movie just had me facepalming. And, again, they're not very likable characters. I genuinely didn't get that invested in them. Honestly I was more invested in the subplot of the parents trying to look for them than the children themselves just because the kid characters were so unlikable.

Like I said before, the movie also feels pretty cheap. Not just because of it mostly taking place in one setting, but also because some of the scenes with the polar bears which just feel super fake. At no point did I get the feeling these children were actually interacting with these bears. Which, of course, you don't want to do for real. I totally get that they're not endangering the child actors here by bringing in a real bear. But I do expect the blending of the greenscreened bears and the actors and the environment to be more decent so it doesn't look cheap and fake (in stills it looks semi-decent, but in motion it doesn't look good at all). Like, if you don't have the budget to pull something off believably why even try at all? The bears just never looked like they actually belonged in these shots where they interact with the actors.

So yeah, while there was potential here, the movie ultimately is on the cheaper and boring side, with annoying and unlikable main characters I didn't exactly root for. I do absolutely think the concept of this movie is interesting (I love adventure stories taking place in the cold north), but the execution botched it. It's not a terrible movie or anything, but not worth watching, either.