The money really was wasted. I mean, I appreciate they went and shot in the icy wilds - there's some spectacular locations: glaciers, fjords, all that stuff. It looks terrific. But at its heart this is a film about a bunch of people stuck in a room struggling to get outside - you could've filmed a lot more of it inside if you wanted to save money and I think provided you'd given those scenes some atmosphere you wouldn't have cared too much.
Cast wise it's very much a B team - good actors to be sure but hardly big box office, and all so old: Donald Sutherland is the hero, Vanessa Redgrave is wasted as the girl (basically), Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee and Lloyd Bridges all handled different accents.
There's some decent action - snowmobiles zipping around, the odd fight, a chase on a boat at the end.
The main problem is I just didn't care. There were too many scenes of people in parkas where their faces were hidden (may be accurate, but hard to make an emotional connection). The stakes were old Nazi gold which I guess is okay - just not as good as something like, say, beating the Nazis in war time.
It was also hard to engage with any of the characters. Donald Sutherland didn't seem particularly interested with what was going on - no one did. MacLean came up with some decent twists in the past- like in Puppet on a String the heroin addicted girl being show to putting it on etc. But here you know it's going to be Widmark or Bridges so when its Bridges, its like "so what"?
It's not terrible, not a disaster just a B movie.
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