Against the Ice (2022)

Against the Ice earns its power the old-fashioned way: by dropping you into a vast, indifferent wilderness and letting human willpower argue with it minute by minute. Peter Flinth turns Greenland into a stunning, merciless cathedral of ice, and the film’s crisp cinematography makes you feel the cold in your teeth while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Joe Cole build a gripping, lived-in bond that’s equal parts endurance test and quiet character study. The tone is stark, physical, and immersive—more tense survival chamber piece than swashbuckling adventure—so it’s not for viewers who shy away from harsh injuries or animal peril, but if you want a historical drama that feels elemental and earned, it’s hard to shake. By the time the horizon stops looking beautiful and starts looking endless, you’ll understand why this story still matters.

Against the Ice is clearly aiming for a gritty, true-story endurance tale about two men versus the Arctic, and it nails the physical misery with convincing locations, harsh weather, and committed performances from Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Joe Cole. The problem is that it often feels like survival-by-checklist: long stretches of trudging, repeated setbacks, and dialogue that doesn’t always deepen the characters, so the runtime can start to feel longer than the journey. The violence and suffering are blunt and sometimes hard to watch (including animal deaths), but the film still struggles to generate real suspense, which is a frustrating mismatch for material that should be white-knuckle. If you like slow, somber survival dramas built on atmosphere and attrition, it’s solid; if you want tight pacing, escalating tension, or rich character writing, this may leave you cold in the wrong way.