Survival Against all Odds Across the Mother of All Continents

Rating: 7/10 (21 April 2013)

There's some dispute as to the validity of the original account that this story was *loosely* based on, so that kind of killed it slightly for me. I find it hard to invest myself in it when I know it's all been buggered about with. I will never understand the need for it. They say "it's unfilmable", "it wouldn't work". I think that's rubbish though and would rather watch a true account any day than a half true account. But that's a separate issue to how good the film is so that notwithstanding .... This was a pretty decent tale of how a band of hitherto disparate prisoners escape a Siberian gulag and head south for India. What I liked about this is it avoided certain clichés like repetitive dramatic chases and narrow escapes. Very hard to find a film that doesn't follow that pattern. No instead, it accepts the likelihood that they wouldn't pursue them very far in that terrain, probably assuming that the endless cold barren wasteland would take care of them if they got away. Besides, the journey itself is enough without any added drama. So the whole film becomes about their struggle to carry on through difficult conditions. Again, you might expect them to follow the group-breaks-down-in-violent-confrontation cliché, but no they avoid this, even though one of the group has been shown to have psychotic form. The only unfortunate cliché they fell into was planting some female interest into the plot, although that was handled pretty well - no soppy romance. They even avoided the wolves versus men action fight that seemed inevitable at one point. Fair play to the cliché avoidance officer in this crew! I thought Jim Sturgess was powerful as the lead. Ed Harris awesome as always. Hell even ratboy Farrell put in a good turn. I found Saoirse whatsherface a little out of place here but perhaps that's just me - she'll probably be a huge star in a few years anyway. As they crossed freezing wastes, deserts, mountains, I did find myself struggling to believe if this journey would even be possible under those circumstances. Maybe this did happen and it would be mind-blowing if it did, but I just found it a little hard to believe. My only other criticism was I felt more time could've been spent on certain scenes, e.g. the break-out. Perhaps a victim of over-editing. Aside from these minor criticisms, I thought it was a really well-acted and entertaining watch. Not for action fans, not for kids. If you like made-up stories, and you enjoyed Defiance, The Pianist, Empire of the sun, or Castaway, maybe this is for you.