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Arctic Blue Reviews

Slowed down by too much rugged-individualist philosophizing and too many overhead traveling shots of a shivering Mother Nature, this beautifully shot film is a fairly respectable modern version of HIGH NOON, set in Alaska. Staking claim to a new life, a conservation agent, city boy Eric Desmond (Dylan Walsh), and his girlfriend, Anne Marie (Rya Kihlstedt), run afoul of a trio of illegal trappers, Ben Corbett (Rutger Hauer), Mitchell (John Bear Curtis), and Lemalle (Jon Cuthbert). They bully some out-of-their-league hunters and leave two to freeze to death after another gets knifed for drawing on them first. Ben is captured by the aging sheriff (Richard Bradford), who is afraid to handle the captured desperado himself, so he gets his son, Eric, to help transport the murder suspect to Fairbanks by plane. After Ben's whereabouts are determined by other anti-conservation outlaws and Ben's kinsman, Bob Corbett (Bill Croft), Ben prepares for a rendezvous by killing the sheriff. Since Ben's claim of self-defense in the campground murders seems even more spurious now, Eric bravely endeavors to bring Ben to justice. But Ben forces the Cessna to crashland so that his sympathizers can track him through the wilds. For political reasons involving a pipeline leak, Eric's oil company employer, Leo Meyerling (Kevin M. Cooney), doesn't phone in a distress call, leaving Eric at the mercy of wily Ben and the elements. Saving Ben's life after he tumbles in icy water, Eric comes to respect the loner's value system but not his refusal to yield to the law. Making it back to the small town jail, with Ben's pals on alert after torching Eric's trailer-home, Eric nervously awaits the next morning's arrival of a helicopter. But first he must run the gauntlet of Ben's cheering section at a copper mill, with only Anne Marie sticking up for him. Eric shoots Mitchell and knocks Bob over a barrel, which forces him to roll downward to his death. Eric is nearly killed by Lemalle, but Ben throws a pick ax at his former cohort, to repay Eric for saving his life in the wilderness. Leo bites the dust after mortally wounding Ben. Instead of flying Ben back to face prison, Eric agrees to land the dying wilderness man in his beloved unspoiled terrain. When the story sticks to the tricky central relationship of nature advocate Eric and Grizzly Adams clone Ben, ARCTIC BLUE balances food for thought with rugged frostbitten action. Unfortunately, the movie often turns into an arctic western. Everyone in the film, be they town coward or outdoorsy criminal, is painted in the blackest of colors so that Eric's white hot altruism will shine even brighter. But his zeal in playing a one-man posse hardly seems motivated. It isn't even his job. Of course, the point is that although Eric and Ben are cut from the same cloth, Ben is so non-conversant with civilization he's in danger of extinction. Entertainingly, the film demonstrates how the two men come to the same moral awakening from two diametrically opposed positions; they both reserve their greatest respect for the purity of the land, but Ben wants to live off its bounty, while Eric wants to preserve it at all costs. The true enemy here is Leo, the oil company executive. A bit sluggishly directed as if the cameraman's fingers went numb in between shots, the film succeeds in the writing and performing of the Ben-Eric relationship but has less luck depicting Ben's ornery cuss comrades, who appear to have spent too much time viewing DELIVERANCE (1972) at the Anchorage Bijou. The perfect film for survivalists to top off a chilly weekend stay in the wilderness, ARCTIC BLUE provides an endurance test for those not inured to he-man movie cliches. (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, extreme profanity.)