Ice Station Zebra
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Movie Reviews of Ice Station Zebra
Movie Review: Cold War in the proper setting.
Summary: 4 Stars
At the time this film was released, the spy satellite at the center of the story was considered a science fantasy. We know better now. Cold war thriller with all the implausible elements all too plausible in the present time.Movie Review: Can't beat Alister McClain
Summary: 4 Stars
Just a good solid sci-fi/adveture picture. This is what the studio put up against 2001 a space odessey. Good actors, good special effects for the day. Great story from the cold war, you'll like it.Movie Review: An unrevealed plot
Summary: 4 Stars
Some good excitement through an unrevealed turn of events. Good acting. Fast shipping.Movie Review: A well made film, but still doesn't live up to the potential of the novel,
Summary: 3 Stars
Partial spoiler below, but of the original novel, not the movie. ******** I will be the first to admit that the first half of "Ice Station Zebra" is a damn near perfect film adaptation of the first third of one of the greatest suspense and adventures novels ever written. The casting is perfect, the performances are dead on, and the screen play includes the major plot points and the important sequences from the "Dolphin's" trip from its base in Scotland to the Arctic Ice Pack. The torpedo tube sabotage that nearly sinks the "Dolphin" in particular, has got to be one of the most gripping and intense "submarine crisis" sequences EVER filmed.
However, for the 2/3rds of the film (after the "Dolphin" has arrived at the Ice Station) the film-makers decided that they couldn't trust the source material and veered away from much of what made the novel so great. Don't get me wrong, the story they chose to film is still a pretty good adventure and suspense tale, it just wasn't "Ice Station Zebra". What made the novel so great was the powerful depiction of the cross country trek Carpenter and two of the crew are forced to make to reach the survivors while the "Dolphin" searches for thinner ice to break through closer to the wrecked station. And following this epic struggle, as the sub journeyed back under the ice pack with the survivors of the disaster the novel becomes a "whodunit". Carpenter queries the survivors in attempt to find the spy (or traitor) in their ranks who started the fire and killed several members of the station crew even before he set the fire. And people start getting their skulls cracked open as the spy lurks about the ship as Carpenter plays cat-and-mouse with him. And then there is an amazing plot turn as the spy sabotages the nuclear reactor with a fire UNDER THE ICE and the crew must race to defeat a monstrous blaze before they asphyxiate. And the final plot twist and the abrupt reversal of fortune at the end, is one of the most clever and satisfying I have ever read.
Unfortunately, what we got instead in the movie was a bunch of people pointing assault rifles at each other in a fairly straightforward game of "Brinksmanship". Again, this was well done, but not NEARLY as intelligent and involving as the novel.
So, docked several points for not trusting the source material and going for the "loud and obvious" ending. But it is still a GREAT thriller.
Movie Review: Passable but I'd expect better from cast and director
Summary: 3 Stars
With such an assembly of actors and a director who knew his stuff, I honestly expected more from a film taken from a great book, but sadly it didn't do the book or the cast justice.
Where was the exciting fire aboard the submarine after the rescue? It had gone. Instead we had a company of Russian troops being parachuted down to confront a company of US Marines who had been carried on the submarine to the Ice Station (neither the Russian or the American troops had been in the book) and to me it seemed the show-down between the two sides was as frustrating as the storyline; great potential but nothing really happened - it was like opening a huge box of a present and finding a tiny uninteresting object inside.
It would have been better to dispense with the pointless confrontation between the two armies and concentrate on the story of why secret agents from the UK and Soviet Union were there anyway. What about the characters of the Ice Station? Almost ignored and passed over, they were just names, yet Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan knew each by name, and as these two guys were spies it stood to reason the blokes on the Ice Station were also spies or at least in cahoots, and would have known something.
Too much made of making it like a Cold War stand off and not enough injected into it of a man hunt between the protagonist and antagonist. We had a brief flash at the end but by then I'd lost interest and couldn't care who was what or what happened to them.