Against the Ice

Against the Ice

Beware: Approximately thirty minutes into “Against the Ice,” an entertainingly hokey Icelandic-Danish survival adventure, two sled dogs die. I wouldn’t be shocked if in a cut scene or unshot sequence additional canines were also bumped off by the film’s makers, including star-producer-co-writer Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister on “Game of Thrones”). That’s the highest praise I can offer this story about two Arctic explorers in 1909 who trekked to the known edge of Greenland and then tried not to perish somewhere in between.

“Against the Ice” serves up all the wild period-drama thrills and survival-horror jitters you could ask for from a picture with that title. Coster-Waldau and Joe Derrick quickly establish their narrative based on Arctic explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen’s memoir “Two Against the Ice” as one of those gruesome, high-minded boys’ adventure tales where anything, particularly when expected, goes wrong.

Haunted sea captain Mikkelsen (Coster Waldau) recruits naïve mechanic Ivar Iversen (Joe Cole) for a journey to a cairn (or “a stack of stones one can see from far away,” as one character helpfully puts it) far from their ship, the Alabama, and its crew. Within this particular pile of rocks rests a written account of what happened to the last Danish expedition. According to said document, Danish adventurers not American rival Robert Peary had already reached Greenland’s northernmost border; thus implying that the U.S. has no claim on the Arctic, as Mikkelsen informs Iversen.

How or why proving such an esoteric point could be part of their mission likely crossed your mind during any number of “Into-the-Arctic”-set action sequences requiring our heroes to kill another dog or two. With campy, economical dialogue another explorer tells Iversen not to get too friendly with the animals because sometimes, if things go south, you must “shoot the worst dog” and “feed it to the others”; Iversen later breezily opines that “once you learn to trust your lead dog, it all kind of falls into place” Derrick and Coster-Waldau playfully plant viewers’ expectations.

That’s one way to say that both lines should make your skin crawl long before the first dog-related incident does; and that this second occurrence should have you instantly hooked or else desperate to switch off. Among other things, it adds an amusingly ominous tint to innocuous sounding exchanges like when Mikkelsen says that “Denmark will thank you one day, Iver Iversen,” or after they find their cairn and he declares they’re headed back to the Alabama before sailing off into “home sweet home.” This is many icicles removed from Mikkelsen and Iversen growing matching beards. Only then do they start bonding like normal turn of the century men by talking about their first sexual experiences or whether they’d ever consider cannibalism (they would).

“Against the Ice” is fair, to be honest, it has some tense and well-paced set pieces, and good-looking, moody outdoor photography (courtesy of Danish cinematographer Torben Forsberg), some of which was shot in Greenland. Cole and Coster-Waldau are also both great in their roles, even if they’re not the main characters of the movie. Well Coster-Waldau obviously is, with his multi-hyphenate role in getting this movie completed as is. But not for his on-camera performance. As a screenwriter, Coster-Waldau (and Derrick) stuff every scene with lurid and surprising detail that will delight fans of airport paperbacks and/or B-movie suspense.

Don’t let the mid-sized budget fool you: “Against the Ice” tells you exactly what kind of movie it is at all times not just when computer-animated polar bears attack or when prim (but blessedly hammy) character actor Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister on “Game of Thrones”) shows up as a Danish cultural minister making pronouncements about Iversen and Mikkelsen’s fate from the safety of a (probably well-heated) conference room. Dance makes a meal out of the word “lieutenant,” and also gives very good monologue describing an explorer’s “single most important task.” Obviously there’s “blood, sweat, and tears” involved.

Days pass in a somber flurry of intertitles marked by numbers (ex: “DAY 132”), and soon enough you start looking forward to mirage like phantoms such as hot air balloons and stranded automobiles as much as gonzo dialogue like the above-mentioned cannibal talk. It’s not a horror movie so you might not be ready for Iversen to conclude that “if my hands were removed before I die” “Yeah I could quite happily eat you.” Polar bears and lanced boils are great too but “Against the Ice” keeps you in suspense by making you wonder how long you’ll have to wait for the next awful and surreal thing to happen. Usually not very long at all.

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