By TIM WATKIN
(Herald rating: * * * )
Ernest Shackleton is one of the last great heroic figures of a time before technology ruled. Now, Imax technology retells his greatest adventure with all the the big screen power it can muster. It's just sad it doesn't do it better.
Shackleton set off to become the first man to cross Antarctica in 1914 with a crew of 27 men, including Kiwi captain Frank Worsley, the undersung local hero of this saga.
Before long they were stuck in pack ice and forced to spend nine months playing football and having singalongs on a sheet of pack ice.
It's then that a series of "if that wasn't bad enoughs" begins - their ship breaks apart in the spring thaw, then a march across the ice fails to reach land, then the crew launch lifeboats and sail across the southern ocean ... Well, you can see it all for yourself if you want to know how it ends.
The sheer courage and strength of will is staggering, the telling of the story is not. It leaves you as cold as the floes.
Any writer will tell you that when you have a great story, let it do the work. Don't bash the audience over the head with it.
But this script is overwrought, all "forbidding as a distant planet" and "unearthly beauty." The makers' only excuse is that this is clearly pitched at an American market and they clearly presume Yanks need to be force-fed.
The same reasoning probably led to Spacey being chosen as narrator, but that flat tone that has worked so well on other films is simply dull here.
Would Ralph Fiennes, the explorer's cousin, have been too obvious a choice?
The 40-minute film is rescued by the great tale and the awesome footage of not only the precious stills and film from 1914-1916, but the exquisite beauty of the ice as it is today. If you're not hanging on for dear life, it does look beautiful down south.
Narrator: Kevin Spacey
Director: George Butler
Rating: G
Running time: 40 minutes
Screening: Imax
Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure
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