A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Eight Below

Date Viewed: 2/25/06

Details:

Paul Walker

Moon Bloodgood

Jason Biggs

Gerard Plunkett

Director: Frank Marshall

Score: +

The Review: Transport around the Antarctic is spotty at best, so a variety of means are usually ready at hand: large and small planes, snow-cat tractors, skimobiles, skis. Dog-powered sled is still a robust, safe and surprisingly efficient way to travel over diverse and precarious terrain -- and because that describes a lot of the Antarctic surface, they are still in routine use today. Eight Below is the fictionalized story of one of these dog teams at an American NSF research station, their musher (Walker), and the vagaries of weather and finance when an emergency evacuation requires rapid exit of not all creatures great and small.

The dogs are excellent! Gorgeous cinematography in Greenland and Norway as Antarctic surrogates. And a good score by Mark Isham. I have a few quibbles with the light (March thru August can be pretty dark in Antarctica, seeing as it is the Southern Hemisphere winter) and the meteorite find location (typically on glacial moraine, marginal or merger, not exposed mountain slopes), but these do not detract from enjoying the movie. However my attention did wander a bit here and there, giving rise to a few stray thoughts.

Another in the series of Disney tear-jerkers with the titular suffix: Inspired by a True Story. This is becoming a nasty habit.

By the way, the title has nothing to do with temperature.

(5-Mar-06)

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