This is an odd voyage for Netflix, strange less for the nature of the expedition itself and more for the ambition of it, a rare film for the streaming service that allows us to go with people to a real place, a world away from green screens and sound stages. The sheer on-the-ground expanse of old-fashioned survival adventure Against the Ice immediately separates it from the many other films landing, or more often crash-landing, on the platform.
The vast on-the-ground breadth of old-fashioned survival adventure Against the Ice instantly differentiates it from the many other films landing, or most commonly crash, in this age of poorly financed content produced for the tiniest of screens.
Against the Ice is a fascinating factual storey of survival in a hard and terrible environment. Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen’s biography showed that two daring polar explorers crossed a wide wilderness to seize Greenland for Denmark. They faced harsh weather, polar bear assaults, malnutrition, and terrible solitude. If only the film adaption had done a better job of capturing their traumatic experience.
Against the Ice plods, along with a matter-of-fact tone that feels cold and stale, The seriousness of their predicament is never in doubt. The film, however, fails to attract the viewer with a compelling narrative. It’s a crucial distinction from its contemporary streaming rivals compared to other big-screen pictures in this genre. It’s a familiar storey told boldly but with no differentiating flare.
It’s a passion project for Game of Thrones veteran Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who co-writes and plays as Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen. Still, it’s fairly restrained on screen, a polite, by-the-numbers narrative of men against the elements that should please anyone looking for a straightforward, solid retro drama. Those expecting anything additional will be disappointed.
It’s the actual account of a Danish trip to Greenland in 1909 to dispute the American claim to the north-eastern area, based on the assumption that it was divided into different pieces of land. Captain Mikkelsen (who, in real life, would have been 29 at the time, a small stretch for the 51-year-old Coster-Waldau) is following in the footsteps of an earlier, ill-fated mission, attempting to collect the corpses or findings of the men who came before them. He must abandon his crew aboard the ship and brave the extremes to make the last journey. This 400-mile round trip will necessitate the assistance of a companion.
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The sole volunteer is mechanic Iver (Joe Cole), untrained but enthusiastic. So the two head off, knowing they may never return. While the protagonists are risking life and limb to venture into unexplored terrain, the rest of us are following in their footsteps. It’s mainly pleasant, not as compelling as it could have been given the gravity of the situation, but with just enough forward motion to keep us on board. The film’s most powerful scenes are those that teeter on the verge of disaster, unpleasant suspense born by the awareness that death is always just one bad step away in a setting like this.
And it’s not only from tumbling down an ice ledge or into frigid water (pushed by a shoddy-looking CGI bear), but also from wrecked or lost supplies, hurt or killed snow dogs, and the continual anxiety that something will go wrong and everything will be gone. Against the Ice is a Danish narrative homogenised for a worldwide audience, adapted from Mikkelsen’s posthumously released novel (which means we’re never fully in the dark about where we’re going).
The choice is made for people to talk in English with a range of regional British accents, a little jarring compromise to attract eyeballs that, for a movie about an ambitious country seeking to make advances to settle a fight over who owns what with another, feels a little confusing. There’s a similar lack of detail in most of the conversation, which sounds overly simple at times and way too modern (were people inviting others to go for a “walk and speak” in 1909?).
Coster-Waldau, like many of his Game of Thrones co-stars, has mostly struggled to find his groove outside of Westeros, and while he’s far too old to play Mikkelsen (the dramatic shift of watching someone in their late twenties vs early fifties grapple with such responsibility is huge), he makes an adequate lead, tasked mostly with tersely reacting to bad things happening.
The last act forces him into a hallucinatory mode in an attempt to bridge the distance between home and away, resulting in a rather unconvincing lurch to the finish line. But it’s a pleasant finale to a voyage we’ve done many times before and will almost certainly take again. Perhaps the next time, it will be one to remember.
