The long escape from a Russian Gulag, easy to praise, not as easy to enjoy.

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2011)

DVD from my public library.
During the time just before and during WW2 the Russians had a large number of Gulags, prisons, and they didn't need much of an excuse to put someone there. The story here focuses on one of them in Siberia, and as one of the Russian officers says, the landscape itself is your prison. It is far away from anything else and anyone trying to escape by foot would be expected to die at once point along the way.
Still a small band of prisoners refused to die in the Gulag and they escaped one blizzardy winter night. The blizzard was a benefit, it helped to cover their tracks. But it was brutal, they peeled off Birch bark to make masks to keep their faces from freezing.
The movie is very well filmed, and very well acted. I enjoyed it from that aspect. Plus it is a good story of the triumph of the human spirit, based on real events. But during the middle of the movie many scenes move very slowly as we watch them close to death, crossing vast areas without vegetation or water, trying to get water and food. Not all of them made it.