Joe Penna’s directorial debut, Arctic, was a movie I highly anticipated, one that I didn’t love as much as I thought I would during its viewing, but one that stuck around with me well after it was over and one that’s worth a review. I wish this movie was a true story. It would have made the movie more meaningful. But, at the same time, Penna could have easily said that this was inspired by actual events because, of course, it was. There are survival stories like the one in Arctic across this beautiful planet every single day, whether it be in the frozen terrain in the middle of the Arctic nowhere, or on a mountain, in the middle of a forest, a desert, an ocean, or any other location where it would be deemed unsurvivable for the average person in the short-term and anyone in the long-term. So while the story of Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen – The Promised Land, The Hunt) is not his own, I don’t think the move is lessened because of what we know do know about stories where a person or a group of people are stranded in the middle of nowhere and either survive or don’t survive.
Learn from my mistake, and don’t watch the trailer for this movie. It gives away too much. The poster and the Rotten Tomatoes score were enough. Rule number one for me is to be convinced without the trailer. If the poster, word of mouth, RT score, and critics’ reviews aren’t enough, I’ll start with the extended movie trailer. When I’m convinced I will see or not see the movie based on the trailer, I stop the trailer. Instead, I watched the entire trailer for Arctic, and my movie experience suffered some. But, withstanding that, my movie was, for the most part, enjoyable. What might turn most people off from this film is that there is virtually no speaking. There might be a total of 100 words spoken. It’s like the middle of Cast Away without Tom Hanks talking to his volleyball. Arctic makes Cast Awayy look like the Mickey Mouse Club, and I love Cast Away. I teared up when Wilson floated away in the ocean.
As mentioned, the always fabulous Mikkelsen plays Overgård, a researcher-explorer who has crash-landed his tiny, two-person plane as gone down in the middle of a cold and stormy white wilderness. His aircraft is inoperable to fly but still intact and habitable. While chilly, it can be completely sealed and even locked. There is a bed that he’s too big for, but he makes work with the help of a table. We also are never told how long he has been there. It’s been at least a couple of weeks. It may have been a couple of months. He’s lost the better parts of a few of his toes to frostbite.
We do know that he won’t run out of water (hell, if the world ran bone dry, he’d be the last person left on earth) or food. Overgård has multiple ice fishing stations outside living quarters where he has frequent small successes with sashimi and the occasional salmon. His days are spent finding rocks to make massive S.O.S. signals, trekking up to the highest point within walking distance from the plane to use (what looks like an ancient) radio transmitter to locate other aircraft in the area, and avoiding dangerous predators. While he has a good sense of direction and a functional map that can get him to the closest place of human habitation, he knows that his best bet is to be found. Even if those looking for him don’t know precisely where his plane went down, he has all of the elements he needs to survive precisely where he is. He likely could have survived for an entire year or more if he had to.
However, that would be a pretty dull movie to watch him fish, use a transmitter to try to radio for help and move stones around each day. Early enough in the film, a helicopter does spot him and tries to make a daring rescue. Unfortunately, it gets caught up in the wind. It hits the earth hard, killing its pilot and leaving the only other character in the film (Maria Thelma Smáradôttir) injured and needing desperate help to survive. She has a severed abdomen. Overgård is able to bandage it with the chopper’s first aid kit, and he’ll be able to care for her after he sleds her back to his plane. He’s even excited about the supplies he found on the helicopter after the crash. However, her wound becomes infected, and she begins developing a terrible fever. While he knows he can sit and wait for rescue, the woman (who speaks, I think, one word in the movie) cannot. She needs immediate medical care. To do so, Overgård has to get the two over the treacherous mountain terrain to reach a strip with much more known traffic. And this is where we have our movie.
Things don’t go as planned as they trek out for their multiple-day journey. There will be obstacles of all kinds along the way, including the mountains, the snowy surface, the wild, sinkholes, the cold, and the pure exhaustion of not having to carry your supplies to stay alive but also having to trudge a full-grown woman in a sled. The pushing, pulling, grunting, slipping, falling, etc., by Overgård is enough for us never to want to travel anywhere alone in our lives ever again.
It is both a pleasurable watch. The runtime is 98 minutes, which feels right. With the early repetition and little action until beyond the halfway mark, you would think it would make for a dull watch. It’s not. It’s a movie that, when you leave it, you won’t know if you like it or not, but one that will stick with you for much longer than you think. I attribute most of that to the veteran Mikkelsen, who is excellent in everything he does (seriously, see both The Promised Land and The Hunt) more than I do for first-time director Penna. However, he could have done much worse for a debut effort.
If you like survival films, there is little reason why you wouldn’t like this one. But if survival films aren’t your thing, Arctic definitely isn’t the movie for you. But if it comes across on cable late at night and you are willing to give it full attention, you could be pleasantly surprised.
Plot 8/10
Character Development 7/10
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 6/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
77%
C+
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