ARCTIC (2018) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Joe Penna
Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thema Smáradottir
Somewhere in the Arctic, a small plane has gone down and its lone occupant has made a camp around the wreckage. He sleeps on a makeshift cot in the fuselage, catches fish through a hole in the ice, and spends hours each day cranking a portable radio, hoping to alert somebody, anybody, to his existence. In the unlikely event anybody else flies by that way, he's carved a giant SOS in the snow. His toes are showing signs of frostbite. He's trying to survive and figure out what to do next. His options are limited. Like the Robert Redford movie "All Is Lost", "Arctic" contains nothing resembling a subplot, though a second character does appear, a woman who survives when her helicopter crashes during a rescue attempt. So now there are two of them, but the woman's hurt and can't move or talk, and they're a long way from anywhere, and to top it off, there's a hungry polar bear prowling around the neighborhood. Mads Mikkelsen plays the protagonist, and he's one of those actors (like Redford) who can command the screen for prolonged periods alone. It's a bare-bones, man-against-the-elements adventure story, a textbook example of just how well something like this can be done. If you watch it in a place that's below room temperature, wear a coat.
