Review | Arctic film review: Mads Mikkelsen vs nature in captivating survival drama
- Danish actor delivers one of the best performances of his career as a man battling an inhospitable, endless winter in director Joe Penna’s debut feature
- While the film looks and sounds spectacular, it remains beholden to the very specific clichés of this particular subgenre
3.5/5 stars
The last few years have produced a slew of riveting survival thrillers, pitting Man vs Nature in some of the most hostile environments imaginable.
Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for his performance in The Revenant , while Matt Damon bagged a Golden Globe portraying a stranded astronaut in The Martian . And in Arctic, Danish performer Mads Mikkelsen – recently seen in Rogue One and Doctor Strange – delivers one of the most impressive performances of his career as a man battling an inhospitable, endless winter in director Joe Penna’s debut feature.
Employing only an absolute minimum of perfunctory dialogue, Mikkelsen draws us into the fastidious daily struggle of his character, Overgard, to stay alive and hopefully, somehow, get rescued. He has spent weeks sheltering in a downed plane we can only assume was his, fishing for food using a series of rudimentary lines, while operating a distress beacon – with little hope of success.
Suddenly a helicopter appears on the horizon. A miraculous rescue materialises before him, only for the ferociously unpredictable surroundings to fight back, presenting Overgard instead with another life to protect and his hopes dashed once more.
