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80It is an offbeat gem.
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50Film noir has seldom been so blanc.
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75This is an uncommonly involving thriller. I could call it a film noir, except that the sun never sets in the film. That makes a perfect contrast with the only other feature filmed in Barrow, the vampire movie "30 Days of Night" (2007), in which it never rises.
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40If "Ice" never really solidifies, it's nonetheless the work of a filmmaker whose seriousness is worth watching out for.
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Feb 17, 201250Barrow's frozen vistas are a perfect match for the noir tone of On the Ice. Unfortunately, the emotional landscape of MacLean's stoic main character, Qalli, is often as blank as the tundra.
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65In most respects, On the Ice is the kind of straight-ahead, underprivileged-teen drama beloved of Sundance audiences.
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Feb 16, 201250The moral dilemmas in On the Ice ultimately fail to resonate, Qalli's concluding plea for his flawed humanity coming off as strangely hollow.
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Feb 15, 201283The performances, all from non-professional local actors, are noticeably uneven, but the film is as much a portrait of a place as it is a narrative, and cinematographer Lol Crawley shoots the white-on-white polar expanses like they're vistas stretching to the ends of the earth-which in a way, they are.
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50Glinting white vistas and endless light blanket On the Ice, a frigid drama that's tough to warm up to.
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40More than a moral dilemma is needed to make up for the uneven performances, slack pacing and wonky dialogue, and while MacLean certainly has a keen eye, the rest of his storytelling facilities haven't quite caught up with it yet.
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Feb 14, 201280On the Ice is a marvel of concentrated, classical storytelling. The flat, snowy landscape strips away all but the essentials from its tale.
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60Writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, who in his feature debut has lashed together a sturdy vehicle for unadorned morality and pragmatic justice.