Arctic

Arctic

Survival stories, as films to put a character through the wringer of death and despair, are rife with dramatic possibility: here’s someone like you, stranded in the middle of nowhere now watch them try not to die. It’s almost more thrilling to imagine the writers coming up with such a specific predicament than the unfortunate characters themselves. But the best ones (like Robert Redford’s yachting trip gone wrong “All is Lost”) have a poetry to their physical tales of hope, and the worst play out like a list of survival tactics or an endurance test. “Arctic,” directed by first-timer Joe Penna, is somewhere in between those two extremes, its thrills mostly dependent on Mads Mikkelsen’s screen presence.

Things start off somewhat manageable for Mikkelsen’s Overgård. His plane has crashed in some icy nowhere, but he has a pulley system rigged up to a water hole that has yielded him a few fish which he can save for later meals; he has a radio that he cranks every once in awhile with hopes of catching some kind of signal. He is alone, but he knows how to read a map and he has set his watch alarm to keep himself regimented. He seems confident and weirdly prepared for this emergency two key creative choices from Penna and Ryan Morrison’s script that take away the crucial anxiety of watching him figure it all out.

So when a helicopter attempts early on to rescue him but crashes instead, it feels bittersweet less like a traumatic missed chance at survival than another twist thrown at our protagonist by nature or destiny or whatever you want to call it. Pros: he gets some Ramen out of the crash; also some other gear. Cons: Overgård now has one person other than himself that needs caring for this woman who survived the crash but fell into a coma shortly thereafter.

He pledges silently to do so, in one of several moments that are meant to warm the picture up but really just make you acutely aware of how cold your toes are. But then “Arctic” finally gets around to its big event: he’s going to drag her on the sled and walk through (or rather trudge through) treacherous conditions with limited supplies, his destination a seasonal station that the map says is a few days’ journey away.

But once “Arctic” sets out on its suicide mission, good luck and bad luck alternating like sun showers, it feels distressingly linear. The movie’s testing of Overgård’s strength goes from polarizing contrivance (can one man survive three helicopter crashes in one day? Can one human body withstand being hit by lightning?) to heavy-handed metaphor for his inner resilience (can one drag a body over hills for days without eating and get frostbite?).

How much does an overpowering desire to live pump adrenaline into your system? These are not the kinds of questions that distract from the pain and spirit that “Arctic” clearly wants to be about; they distance the viewer from its visceral nature as it beats on Overgård this side of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant.” It doesn’t help that the movie leans pretty hard on its most resonant visual note a lonely white canvas, sometimes filled in with two bodies and a sled or whatever other resourceful combination of shapes necessary to render some semblance of life.

Mikkelsen is also English language movies’ reigning King Flagging Eyes and Brawny Fighter, so he’s still an inspired casting choice here.

However, it is a pity that his character lacks spirituality because this drama unfolds in what appears like a land abandoned even by the silence of God, and there are moments in “Arctic” when it employs cheesy irony about life or death choices. Rather than anything else, the film is concerned with showing how his body can conquer harshest natural hurdles thereby leaving him empty at its least optimistic stages.

And although Overgård spends much time alone thinking, ‘Arctic’ is not one of those great films-for it does not make us imagine too much about what our hero would first do once he eventually gets home.

Watch Arctic For Free On Gomovies.