Set against the eerie snowscape of the artic north ice station zebra guards a secret that will change the balance of world power. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/27/2005 Starring: Rock Hudson Ernest Borgnine Run time: 149 minutes Rating: GOut of step with the public mood when it was released in 1968, Ice Station Zebra has held up decently as a Guy’s Movie. Based on an Alistair MacLean novel, the film is half submarine picture and half spy puzzler, short on action but long on military chatter and espionage gamesmanship. Rock Hudson, looking seasoned and just a little miffed, gives one of his better performances as the captain of a nuclear sub, ordered to the Arctic to check out a disturbance at a research station on the floating ice. He doesn’t know the mission, but he’s stuck with mysterious passengers: haughty British agent Patrick McGoohan, back-slapping Russian operative Ernest Borgnine, and hostile Marine captain Jim Brown. McGoohan gets the film’s best lines and finest fur jacket, but Brown is pretty cool in a smaller role.
John Sturges directs, with customary deliberateness; at times the movie seems to be suffering from iron-poor blood. Much of the dialogue is pretty sharp, especially in the submarine half, enough to keep you engrossed if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing. When the action shifts to the ice, the studio-bound sets inevitably take their toll. It’s not hard to see how this large, old-fashioned project misfired in the era of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, but the more tantalizing question is: Why did this movie become an obsessive favorite of Howard Hughes? Maybe he liked how clean it all looks. –Robert Horton
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June 10, 2008
#1
I loved this movie when I was a kid. I bought it out of nostalgia, and regretted it. The movie may have been good for its time, but it is just bad now. Rock Hudson gives a not-believable performance as a Sub Commander, and the bad guys are sterotypes.
June 11, 2008
#2
The film is available for release on 1/11/2005 on DVD but, for some strange reason, Amazon.com is not selling it.
June 11, 2008
#3
The film adaptation of Alistair MacLean’s best-seller ICE STATION ZEBRA (1968) is one of the movies Howard Hughes watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in seclusion when he was going bonkers.
On the surface, this cold (no pun intended) war espionage suspenser starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Jim Brown is about the submarine rescue mission of Drift Ice Station Zebra, a North Pole weather station team. But everything changes when the sub is ordered to take on mysterious British agent Patrick McGoohan.
The film’s plot is dated, but even with the fake sets and Hudson, something weird happens when watching it that makes it strangely compelling. It’s hard to explain.
It’s nice to see this oddity in such a crisp, widescreen transfer, but I fear that it’s hypnotic power will only be increased. So be careful. I liked the vintage making-of featurette “The Man Who Makes the Difference.”
I give it four stars only because it has a Hughes connection and a proven power to take over (damaged?) minds.
June 11, 2008
#4
This film was adopted from Alistair MacLean’s novel of the same name, but the novel had the advantage in that it made sense. The film has some good scenes but is infected by Hollywood’s view that the two super powers were morally equal. And although both Patrick McGoohan and Ernest Borgnine are fine actors, they are given some stupid lines. The character of Jim Brown isn’t in the book (that I recall). I’d recommend the film despite its flaws but, since it’s Hollywood, don’t expect a logical plot. (Oh, and in the book, the good guys get the material, the Soviet lose. In the film, it’s a draw)
June 11, 2008
#5
If you have read the book, then watch the movie until the 140th minute and stop. You will thank me for it.
Until then, the movie is a taut thriller, and Rock Hudson really towers and carries the movie thru.