Ice Soldiers is a cheap and quick release from Sony, a movie that somehow got financing. The story is terrible, the acting bad except maybe for Ironside who is woefully underutilized, and it’s just an all around boring-ass movie whereupon I found more entertaining looking up at my ceiling than paying any attention to the plot.
Ice Soldiers
(2013)
Genre(s): Science-Fiction, Drama, Suspense/Thriller
Sony | PG13 – 91 min. – $35.99 | February 25, 2014
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Genre(s): Action, Science Fiction MOVIE INFO: DISC INFO: Audio: English (DTS-HD MA 5.1) |
THE MOVIE – 0.5/5
Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve the kind of punishment I just had to endure with the sci-fi actioner, Ice Soldiers, featuring wooden acting and an utterly forgettable plot. This is the kind of movie I’d expected to have aired on SyFy and most certainly this is filler for the bargain bin at the local Wal-Mart.
The story begins in 1962 while the United States deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis, up in remote Canada, the wreckage of a plane is discovered and shockingly enough, three of its passengers, bleached blonde Ruskies, have survived and are taken to a nearby base camp to be examined. They awaken from their frozen slumber to slaughter the base’s residents and also one rapes the scientist assigned to study them, though she survives the ordeal. After they were finished, the three Russian super-soldiers (GABRIEL HOGAN, MATTHEW G. TAYLOR and ANDRE TRICOTEUX), walk off into the Arctic snow never to be seen again, until…
Fast forward 50 years later and a team has comes to this remote region for an expedition headed by a man named Malroux (DOMINIC PURCELL) to locate the three Russians. It’s a secret mission under the guise of oil exploration drilling, I think anyway. Helping is scientist Jane Frazer (CAMILLE SULLIVAN) and bad ass military man Colonel Desmond Trump (MICHAEL IRONSIDE) supplying the necessary soldiers and personnel for the search. Trump, Malroux and crew make camp near a mountain where Malroux believes the three Russians went and after some searching, and just before Trump is about the pull the chord for the entire operation, Malroux manages to find the three, once again frozen, in a icy cave where they are recovered, brought back to base and after believing to be dead, is discovered they are still alive and put on life support.
I think we all know where this is going only because we already experienced a similar sequence in the beginning! Anyway, the purpose of the expedition was that the scientist and off-reservation military guy Trump want to extract and examine the Russians’ DNA as they were apparently engineered to, back in ’62, to invade the U.S. Or something along those lines, I honestly can’t remember as I was too busy looking at my ceiling given how boring the movie was to this point (about 50-minutes in). I also should mention there was an attempt at some kind of lover interesting for Malroux by Sullivan’s Jane character but it goes nowhere.
You get the gist where this plot is going: the genetically engineered Russians wreck havoc, kill with ease, somehow cause massive explosions, mayhem, chaos, etc., etc., etc. The film then goes with Malroux hunting down the Russians and receives help from a Native American named TC Cardinal (ADAM BEACH) and they work together as the Russians have some diabolical plan to take out the power in a small town and, you guessed it, kill anyone they can and also carry out their ultimate plan to go to New York and do something or other, I honestly forgot and frankly couldn’t care less by that point.
Ice Soldiers is not only a forgettable action-thriller but also downright boring to go along with a thin story, one-dimensional characters and shoddy performances save maybe for Michael Ironside but his appearance is short lived. Dominic Purcell might be an OK actor, and apparently was good on “Prison Break”, but his choice in roles with terrible screenplays doesn’t help matters and includes a horror movie called Escapee which I had the displeasure to see last year.
The film was helmed by Sturla Gunnarsson, an Icelandic filmmaker who came from television working on shows like “The Firm”, “Rookie Blue” and “Degrassi: The Next Generation” and Ice Soldiers certainly had a TV quality to it though I’d give him a break considering what must’ve been an extremely limited budget (for comparison 12 Rounds 2 cost $2 million and I seriously think this was even lower). In any case, this is a bad movie all around and one I almost fell asleep watching… in the middle of the day of all times!
SPECIAL FEATURES – 0/5
Other than some previews, no features are included.
VIDEO – 4.0/5
Sony Pictures Home Video thaws out the Ice Soldiers and released them on Blu-ray presented with a 2.40 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer. The picture actually isn’t too bad with good and fairly sharp detail levels, colors appear to be well balanced though there are times it doesn’t quite have the pop like other releases. Still, it’s a fine transfer, just not extraordinary.
AUDIO – 4.25/5
The movie comes with a serviceable if not unremarkable 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track which shows off for the clear dialogue through the center speaker and even has some depth during the action scenes. Ambient and off-screen noises sound decent enough to make use of the rear speakers.
OVERALL – 0.5/5
Overall, Ice Soldiers is a cheap and quick release from Sony, a movie that somehow got financing. The story is terrible, the acting bad except maybe for Ironside who is woefully underutilized, and it’s just an all around boring-ass movie whereupon I found more entertaining looking up at my ceiling than paying any attention to the plot. The Blu-ray offers no features while the audio/video transfers are OK but nothing extraordinary.
Published: 02/24/2014