Against the Ice – first-look review

With the pop­u­lar­i­ty of excit­ing, high-pro­file TV fare such as The Ter­ror and The North Water, dra­mat­ic Arc­tic expe­di­tions are hav­ing some­thing of an on-screen pur­ple patch. It’s a slight shame then that Against the Ice is well-inten­tioned and occa­sion­al­ly grip­ping but over­all some­what flat.

It’s 1910 on board Dan­ish ship the Alaba­ma when buc­ca­neer­ing cap­tain Ejnar Mikkelsen (Niko­laj Coster-Wal­dau) asks his crew for a vol­un­teer. Two years ear­li­er, fel­low Dane Lud­vig Mylius-Erich­sen left a note con­firm­ing or deny­ing the exis­tence of the Peary Chan­nel buried in a cairn hun­dreds of miles into the north-east of Green­land. If the chan­nel does exist, Green­land is actu­al­ly two land mass­es, with the north­ern part then appar­ent­ly belong­ing to Amer­i­ca. If it doesn’t, the area belongs to Den­mark. Quite why men were will­ing to risk their lives over a freez­ing, unlive­able wilder­ness is – unlike Green­land – nev­er sig­nif­i­cant­ly explored.

Even­tu­al­ly Arc­tic novice and mechan­ic Iver Iversen (Joe Cole) vol­un­teers. After some lame on-board bants about how the cap­tain will not suf­fer Iversen’s fool­ish­ness glad­ly, the unlike­ly pair set off with two sleds and packs of dogs promis­ing to arrive by August. Some­what omi­nous­ly, Iver is warned that to make his sled faster he may have to shoot one unlucky canine and feed it to the others.

It’s pre­dictably tough going due to per­ilous con­di­tions, gruff Mikkelsen’s refusal to make banal small talk and the loss of their lead dog off a cliff because of Iversen’s inex­pe­ri­ence. When they reach Mylius-Erichsen’s note there is cause for mild cheer but, of course, they have to make it back before sum­mer ends and their ship sails. When they final­ly arrive sans dogs and sleds (hav­ing burned the lat­ter to keep warm), they find their crew have been res­cued but have made two huts from rem­nants of the Alaba­ma, imply­ing they’ll send a search par­ty. Some­what ridicu­lous­ly, Mikkelsen left Mylius-Erich­sen’ note in the cairn but decides they should retrieve it as proof of their findings.

They make the trip again and upon return­ing find a note from the search par­ty tasked with find­ing them that has been and gone. While they wait for anoth­er res­cue Mikkelsen hal­lu­ci­nates while imag­in­ing speak­ing and danc­ing with Naja (Hei­da Reed), the woman he left at home. These scenes feel super­flu­ous, though inter­ludes in Den­mark where we see stern Dan­ish Min­is­ter Niels Neer­gaard (Charles Dance) refus­ing to financ­ing a res­cue have a touch of bite.

To punc­tu­ate the trudge through the snow there’s one great sequence where a bear attacks Mikkelsen and is shot dead by new­ly pugna­cious Iversen, only for the bear to fall on Mikkelsen and send both man and bear crash­ing through the ice. It’s a real moment of grip­ping ten­sion in a film with far too few of them. Coster-Wal­dau and Cole offer reli­ably sol­id per­for­mances while direc­tor Peter Finth’s use of Iceland’s stun­ning topog­ra­phy as a Green­land stand-in is effec­tive. But ulti­mate­ly it’s a film view­ers will scroll past and back to choose with a shrug when they can’t any­thing that looks more fun on Net­flix (it arrives on the stream­er in March).

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