The Last Winter (2006)

Sent to evaluate the environmental impact of oil drilling in the Arctic, James Hoffman clashes with the drilling crew's chief, who wants to get the job done.

Director:

Larry Fessenden

Writers:

Larry Fessenden, Robert Leaver

Stars:

Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview:
Ron Perlman	...	Ed Pollack
James Le Gros	...	James Hoffman (as James LeGros)
Connie Britton	...	Abby Sellers
Zach Gilford	...	Maxwell McKinder
Kevin Corrigan	...	Motor
Jamie Harrold	...	Elliot Jenkins
Pato Hoffmann	...	Lee Means
Joanne Shenandoah	...	Dawn Russell
Larry Fessenden	...	Charles Foster
Oscar Miller	...	Simon Marshowitz
Hálfdán Theodórsson	...	Gary
Eggert Ketilsson	...	Frozen Trucker
Jack Fessenden	...	Young Hoffman
John Speredakos	...	Weatherman
Halfdan Pedersen	...	Doctor Pedersen (as Hálfdan Lárus Pedersen)

Storyline

The American oil company North Corporation is building an ice road to explore the remote Northern Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seeking oil. The independent environmentalists together with the base leader, Ed Pollack, reach an agreement with the government, approving procedures and reports of the operation. When a team member is found dead naked on the snow, the environmentalist James Hoffman suspects that gases may have been accidentally released from the drill site provoking hallucinations and insanity in the group. After a second fatal incident, he convinces Ed to travel with the team to a hospital for examination, however, people continue to die.

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Plot Keywords:

oil company | hallucination | arctic region | oil drilling | snow | 

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Taglines:

The arctic tundra has been frozen for centuries... Untill Now.

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

James Le Gros and Kevin Corrigan both featured in the movie Scotland, PA

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Goofs

When they try and leave the scene where they discover the grader 'n tanker truck, they discover that their snowmobile won't start because it has 'lost all its oil'. That particular sled had a two stroke engine which uses mixed fuel (no crank case oil as in all four stroke engines) so this would've been impossible.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Marketing Video: Alaska. Vast wilderness of the north. Land of great natural beauty and diversity. This is rugged county, land of black gold. Alaska's North Slope has been producing oil out of Prudhoe Bay since 1968, delivering to refineries and ports 800 miles to the south through the great Trans-Alaskan pipeline. But another northern region known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has remained untapped. Only once have prospectors gained access to this barren landscape. In 1986, KIK ...

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Connections

References The Twilight Zone (1959)

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Soundtracks

The Tundra & Footprints
Until Dawn
Performed by Flux Quartet

User Reviews

Good effort undermined by some bad choices

Larry Fessenden's "The Last Winter" is a ambitious and smartly made film. It's photographed beautifully and (by and large) acted with conviction and sensitivity. Though the central conceit about nature "taking revenge" is pretty corny, the atmosphere is also pretty compellingly bleak, and the tension mounts pretty effectively as things go from bad to worse. Sadly, as many other reviewers note, the ending throws it all away in a fit of awful CG monsters.

However, try turning it off right at one hour 27 minutes and 30 seconds. This would have been a solid albeit ambiguous ending; if you must watch further do it on a second viewing and consider it a deleted ending. It's just goofy and pointless, and the final "twist" at the end is telegraphed almost from the very beginning (in fact, one character early on describes aloud exactly what the twist will end up being).

Even without the ending, the script has problems with its petty black-and-white portrayal of heroic environmentalist and selfish oil guy. An ensemble atmosphere pic like this lives and dies on the believability of its characters; Perlman's Ed Pollock is simply too villainous to really be convincing, despite a few nice touches of humanity which Perlman brings to him. Le Gros' Hoffman is also a pretty unengaging hero, a blandly heroic saint of a guy who's always right about everything. I'm a serious environmentalist and a left-leaning guy, but the film's literal take on the situation (the dire warnings of natural disaster, the clear heroes and villains) is shallow at best and preachy and patronizing at the worst. It plays to the most obnoxiously self-congratulatory nature of people concerned with the issues presented here, while at the same time offering nothing of any real substance.

Still, the film itself is a pretty fun watch, and a definite step up from Fessenden's previous effort, the ambitious but amateurish "Wendigo" (the titular spirit of which gets name-checked here too!). Great photography combined with naturalistic acting from the likes of Kevin Corrigan and Zach Gilford do much to sell the vibe of the thing, and the setting and slow escalation of the action also add to the experience. Regardless of its stumbles, the film has loads of ambition to do something substantial and enduring, so even when it can't quite deliver on its promise it still beats the slew of cheap-scare horror remakes which every year become more numerous.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official soundtrack site

Country:

USA Iceland

Language:

English

Release Date:

24 September 2008 (Italy)

Also Known As:

The Last Winter

Filming Locations:

Alaska, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$5,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$8,090, 23 September 2007

Gross USA:

$33,190

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$97,522

Company Credits

Production Co:

Antidote Films (I), Glass Eye Pix, Zik Zak Filmworks

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1