Take one glance at the spectacular landscapes of Greenland and you understand why in Inuit the word for snow has so many variations and derivations. The aerial establishing shot that opens Peter Flinth’s “Against the Ice” alone challenges the descriptive powers of the English language; inhabiting such an environment continually, you would have to find new exotic coinages to communicate the sheer variety of textures that freezing water can exhibit. Such creative imagination, however is sorely lacking from Flinth’s handsome but plodding adventure movie. To reduce a titanic struggle for survival in one of the most inhospitable climes on earth to such by-the-numbers drama is in many ways akin to standing on a jagged frozen peak, gazing across blizzard-assailed permafrost plains to crumbling white cliffs and ice shelfs beyond and thinking “Snow.”
This Netflix movie —…
