USA/Canada, 2009
Seen: Sept 24, 2009 at AMC
Reason to see: Action film with Kate Beckinsdale - I'm in.
I'll preface this review by saying that it was the first film I saw after TIFF'09 closed, which means it the deck is pretty much stacked against it. After seeing 39 high calibre films from around the world, a regular blockbuster doesn't stand be best of chances. And I chose watching it over Jennifer's Body regardless even being aware of it's really low rating on Rotten Tomatoes (6% as of Sept 30/09).
All that being said, it was ever so slightly better than I expected. Which doesn't mean it was great by all means but it was mostly entertaining and I love seeing locations filled with snow. I enjoyed Kate Beckinsdale's US Marshall character, although I find it hard to believe Antarctica would have a US Marshall - especially after seeing the documentary Encounters at the End of the World. I also enjoyed seeing Tom Skerritt on screen, even though it's ingrained in my brain to think of him as Dallas (from Alien) and even while taking notes during the film I wrote "Dallas does...", etc.
The film started to lose me when I was picking up how reminiscent it was of other films (The Thing, The Thing From Another World, Real Genius, etc) and kept loosing me when the it swung from mystery vibe to gross horror to drama. But what really threw me off was that the sense of sense of space, distance, different groups of people and locations was not very well defined. Often I was thinking - where are they now? Who are those people? How would someone get there? Some of that could be the mystery angle, but certainly not all. There was definitely and interesting idea in there, but I found it got lost somewhere along with way.
But, because of the beauty of locations, getting to see snow and the fact that I just like a lot of the actors I would watch it again.
Shannon's Overall View:
I didn't love it
I would watch it again
I'd recommend it as light action/thriller fare
16 minutes of preshow including 4 commercials and 5 previews: Fame, Alice in Wonderland (2010), Surrogates, The Fourth Kind and Lovely Bones
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© Shannon Ridler, 2009
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