Covering pretty much the same ground as the German
As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me, thematically and geographically, Weir's fuller-budget story of POWs sent to a Siberian labour camp making their escape on foot across thousands of hostile miles has the obligatory big names but thankfully avoids the additional histrionics that usually come with the Hollywood version. In fact, the German film, while more credibly based on a real figure, suffered a lot from disbelieving the strength of its own premise and ended up daubing on an archvillain, improbable coincidences and a spurious love interest to boot.
By having a whole band of escapees rely on each other, this one bolsters itself in feasibility and thereby gives itself the room to develop more human interest through their interrelationships, which thankfully remain as unsentimentalised as the vast landscapes, stunning though they are. It's still not on an emotive or visceral par with Weir's best work, such as his last,
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, but respectable enough, and ironically so when you consider that a piece of pure fiction has on this occasion trumped one of historical fact.
6/10
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