Director : Charles Martin Smith
Producer : Rob Merilees, William Vince
Screenwriter : Charles Martin Smith
Starring : Barry Pepper, Annabella Piugattuk, James Cromwell
A little The Edge, a little Dances with Wolves, this adventure oddity is
surprisingly watchable while featuring two stars who never learn to fully
communicate.
Barry Pepper is a bush pilot named Charlie Halliday who takes ill Inuit woman
Kanaalaq (Annabella Piugattuk) on a routine flight, only to have it go down in
the remote wilderness of the tundra. (Lucky for them it's summertime.) The
survive the crash, but Kanaalaq is too sick to walk for help, so Charlie heads
out on his own. He gets lost (and attacked by bees), but Kanaalaq has secretly
tracked him, and she nurses him back to health. Eventually they try to trek
back to the plane (which no one has found, weeks later), and from there they
finally opt to try to trek back to civilization after Kanaalaq has taught
Charlie extensive survival skills.
Based loosely on a true story, much of the film consists of their attempts to
communicate, plus basic survival activities set against the stark and
hauntingly beautiful landscape. This is unfortunately interrupted by flashbacks
to Charlie's days as a fighter pilot as well as asides with the folks back home
(including James Cromwell), who conjecture endlessly about whatever might have
happened to their buddy. All of these asides come off as padding, adding half
an hour to vault the film up to a respectable 90 minutes. Frankly I would have
preferred the 60-minute, streamlined version.
But still, Pepper is amazingly engaging here, despite his character's tendency
to whine, and Piugattuk is a real discovery, even sans English. Give it a whirl
after you turn up the heat.
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" Good "
Rating: PG, 2003