The Snow Walker

First off, there is zero snow until the last couple of minutes, so why the heck is it called The Snow Walker? This is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. I don't think it is really even a movie. There isn't much of a plot or character development. They just kind of hang out for weeks, and then when it is finally time for snow to come, THEN they decide to start walking to rescue when it starts getting cold. What? Why not start walking when it is warmer? There isn't hardly any dialogue, and then at the end she just walks off into nowhere, and he walks to a village - and it ends. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.

The scenery was great. I liked the story. The native woman was excellent. I have a technical complaint about the movie that affected my enjoyment of it because I am a pilot. Airplanes don't dive out of control when the engine quits. In this movie he struggles valiantly to control the aircraft after it blows a 'jug' (cylinder). That's just movie drama bunk that has been used so many times it is pathetic. It probably also affects the way the non-pilot public fear engine failures. Other than that and his macho image as a young pilot, it was a beautiful movie. The stark landscape with its sparse flora and fauna spoke volumes about the unique harshness of that part of the world without using words. Bravo.

Every once and a while a movie comes along that is meant to be, in my humble opinion, seen. The Snow Walker is that movie. The storyline is simple: a bush pilot is asked to bring a young sick Inuit girl to a Yellowknife hospital but the plane crashes in the Canadian tundra. As simple as that. What develops between the two characters is a bond that only two people trying to survive in that situation could experience. Charles Martin Smith's direction is perfect. He gives both Barry Pepper and Annabella Piugattuk free rein in their performances that gives us the impression of improvisation. Their friendship enfolds slowly, as any friendship would, if you where with a stranger battling the tundra, which in this movie, is almost like a third character. As flat and as barren as the tundra may appear, it is shot in such a way that has your eye searching for detail as if you were looking at a painting. The Snow Walker is an example of straightforward storytelling that proves the fact that less is sometimes more. There are no car chases, no gunfights and yet I found myself completely engrossed. I came upon this movie by chance when I read the review in a local newspaper that gave it 4 stars and yet I never saw a single trailer or advertisement for it. What a shame that this great movie will not be seen by a larger audience.

a marginal thumbs up for great camera work in beautiful hard to film setting. Too bad the director thought he could write. The real story of man against the elements is well told, while the back story could have been told in a much subtler manner. The plane crash is made unrealistic for dramatic effect and does not help the plot. If the movie started with the pick up of the Inuit girl and the pilot dead sticked the plane onto the lake it would be a five star move instead of the two star one that the so-called writer decided to make... still its worth a look, as the scenery and the well told story of the self sufficiency of the Inuit people to survive as a race over thousands of years in such a threatening environment. The movie is a must see for the real story inside the Hollywood stock plot.

Charles Martin Smith (or "Toad" for those of you old enough to remember a George Lucas film called "American Graffiti" starring another now famous director, Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus and Harrison Ford) has written and directed a marvelous film. The story explores human nature against the backdrop of the uncompromising wilderness and the incredible beauty of the Canadian Arctic tundra. The scenery in this film is spectacular, but it is the story and the acting that compel the viewer. Barry Pepper does his best work ever in the lead role and newcomer Annabella Piugattuk is splendid in her role as Kanaalaq, who teaches the Pepper character, Charlie Halliday, a WWII fighter pilot turned bush pilot, a new respect for the living and the dead. If you are a fan of author Farley Mowat or of writer/director Charles Martin Smith, do not miss this film. If you've missed it's release in the theaters, do not miss it on DVD. You are in for a rare and unexpected treat.

most of Canada is wilderness and most of that wilderness is the arctic tundra. Farley Mowat is a well known and respected Canadian author who spent his early writing career studying wolves in the arctic and living with the Eskimo or Innu as they call themselves. this film is a must see if you want some insight into the harsh beauty of Canada's north and the difficulties surviving there. Eskimos are descended from the Asiatic people when there was a land bridge across the Bering Sea during the last ice age, therefore the north was populated before the forest lands and prairies of middle North America. it can only be imagined now what life was like for the people living in the arctic in those times. very quickly after the arrival of settlers and white men a way of life was lost forever and now Eskimos have TV and snowmobiles and talk English. this film is an excellent tidbit of a reflection of how the people survived in the north for thousands of years by helping and depending on each other, a lesson still to be learned in the 'advanced' populated regions of the south. a definite must see 9/10

I watched this movie because of previous good comments I found here; that was a mistake. It's all about a bush pilot in the late 40's or early 50's who wrecks his plane and starts walking through the Canadian North with an Inuit girl. The guy is so dumb that it's frustrating. He makes mistake after mistake until you just want him to die because he is plainly too stupid to live. The girl keeps saving him, while she herself is dying of some unspecified illness. You have to wonder why she doesn't just dump this turkey and move on. Adding to the confusion is the fact that sometimes she is able to speak some English and communicate with him; other times she apparently forgets her language skills and can't communicate. No reason why, it just is. The acting is good, production values are great, it's just a bad script that must have been written by someone who had no experience whatsoever with wilderness, Inuits, being lost, communicating with non-English speaking peoples, or much of anything else. In the end, the bad script is what drives it down; our protagonist is working so hard against his own goals that you have no empathy for him at all, and that's when you stop caring about the movie, too.