clanciai As usual with Alistair McLean, it's a great story, but this time they fooled around with it a little too much, overdoing it into almost a parody, drowning the thriller in deafening music and exaggerated technical effects, waltzing around with snow scooters in wild goose chases, and so on. Everything is good until the stormy night, when everything collapses and relapses into chronic confusion, and on top of it all the actors can't speak clearly. Donald Sutherland is clear enough and sticks to his role all the way, Vanessa Redgrave is fair enough also in her acting as always, Richard Widmark also excels in honesty as usual, and who already in 1979 grapples with the problem of climate change and global warming, Christopher Lee is the greatest actor here though, playing an honest Russian for a change, Lloyd Bridges is queer enough, but in the resulting confusion of the sabotages coming in tautologies, it's not quite clear who fired on whom and who caused all those fires and ruined the generator, the radio mast, mixed up the books and so on. Many seem to have messed with many things, and what about poor Larsen? Was his body ever found? Who killed him and why? What did he try to communicate? Sorry, there is too much confusion in this hullabaloo of intrigues and counter-intrigues.Still it's worth seeing, if not for anything else then at least for the story and Donald's discovery of his father. Here is the real mystery and central plot of the story – the mysterious fate of the last German u-boat captain, and the scene revealing the u-boat is a thriller in itself you'll always remember.

TurboarrowIII I don't think this is a very good film.There are a lot of iffy accents. An all star cast don't seem to have any enthusiasm. Donald Sutherland puts in just about the worst performance I have ever seen from him. He talks in a monotonous drawl and just seems bored with the whole thing.There is some action but it isn't very exciting and the whole film seems gloomy and grey with no real spark.As I said the cast don't look like they really want to be there and appear to be going through the motions.I haven't read the book so not sure if the film is like it or not but if the book is as poor as the film then I wonder why they bothered to make it.An all star cast ought to have meant a better film but this is definitely not very good in my opinion.

sdm1234 I don't know this movie. I was looking it up because I enjoyed the book. I'm writing, because I do think that OCT, who gave a VERY negative review of the movie, damaged his/her credibility when he/she said that Alistair MacLean was out-of-print. Hey Oct, go to Amazon.com, do a search, type in the word "Alistair" and see if Alistair MacLean isn't the first option that pops up. Do you just pull "stuff" out of thin air or do you think a little and maybe do a little research first? I was incredulous of your lampooning of each and every member of the cast. These are solid actors... so I was questioning your motives. Then I flashed back to that NONSENSE about Alistair MacLean being out-of-print and realized that YOU should out-of-print.

Kieran Green Alistair McClean's Bear Island is a highly action packed thriller set in the Arctic circle where an international scientific team are conducting the usual experiments. all is not what it seems as some of the team are being killed in mysterious circumstances, there is a superb subplot typical of McClean which involves a hidden Nazi U-Boat full of gold! the cast is mostly all - star for starters you've heroic Donald Sutherland his love interest -Vannesa Redgrave, the ever brilliant Christopher Lee convincing as a polish scientist, comic relief and ex-navy diver Lloyd Bridges, baddie or not baddie Richard Widmark. Alistair McClean's Bear Island is criminally unseen the last time i saw this highly entertaining thriller was probably more than ten years ago! on ITV i recall watching it it probably edited for violence as most posters on this site mention, in the time that has passed several film adaptations of McClean have been released except this and it should be released it's still out there on deleted VHS format too bad it really needs to be seen in 2:35:1 widescreen it's terrible watching anything in pan and scan you are really watching one half of the frame! hopefully Columbia will release this soon