Fresh and Exciting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

First off, Christopher Lambert just vaulted to near the top of my least favorite actors list. Here as the hero, Lambert is just plain boring. All actors not named Caan or Young turn in performances that can only be described as awful. The story of a land grab has been done over and over in uncountable westerns. The editing is puzzling to say the least, with large moments of time obviously missing on the cutting room floor. Finally, the ending is so scattered, it almost seems like the director was unsure when to yell cut. There are only two reasons to endure the mercifully short 89 minutes of "North Star". James Caan turns in a wonderfully bizarre performance as the heavy, and the snowy landscapes provide a nice backdrop and diversion from the sub par script and acting. - MERK

North Star is unique for a European western in that it's set in Alaska, far from the sun baked deserts of the southwest. Everything else is disappointingly typical.Caan plays a black-hearted land baron in 1899 Alaska who's systematically murdered and cheated his way into being the owner of the largest goldmines in the area. He tries to kill Lambert, a half Eskimo who had the good sense to file a claim on his people's sacred (and gold rich) cave.It isn't boring but a chase movie where Christopher Lambert squares off against James Caan and Burt Young in a savage frontier battle for survival should have generated more heat than this, especially being that this is co-written by Sergio Donati, who also helped pen For A Few Dollars More and Once Upon A Time In The West!It's pretty straight forward and unpretentious but it made me wish it were more compelling. The characters were pretty cardboard, though Caan seems to be having some fun swinging back and forth between greedy and treacherous to insane and out of control.Also, everyone appears to be under-dressed. This movie takes place in Nome, Alaska during a snowstorm but everyone's dressed like it's Fall.Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson were better in Death Hunt, watch that one first!

Had "North Star" been made in, let's say, the 60s or 70s, then I would be able to watch it and classify it as maybe an eight or nine-star film. It's got the kind of plot that would suit a 90s movie, but the way it's made is far too reminiscent of the past. And when you mix a film that looks modern with a style of the past, it comes out a bit campy. For example, the screenplay seems like it was written a long time ago and went unchanged until just now. Characters laughing at jokes and stuff that are not even remotely funny were common back in the 60s and 70s, but not in films of the 90s. I hate to say it, but sound effects and stuff in this movie like that are also no better than the Westerns of long ago. Thus, the shootouts aren't that exciting. Some parts of "North Star" go on for too long, some parts whip by way too fast.There are some positive aspects to "North Star" though. Even though it does seem like it's made in the wrong time and kind of cheesy, it is a film that you can sit down and watch without getting bored. Sure, you'll be thinking a lot, "man, that was...weird" or "that wasn't very thrilling" or "that was disappointing", but it is a film where you want to see the rest of it. That's what made me give this film five out of ten stars for a rating. But it's still heavily flawed and had it been made twenty or thirty years before it really was, I think it would have been better.

From the erstwhile afamed "spaghetti westerns" by Sergio Leone, filmed here in Almería, Spain, naturally, we pass on to a new variety which might be called "northern" rather than "western".Totally filmed in Norway, the land of smorgasbord breakfasts, not in Alaska, we have here a typical sort of copy-Hollywood style of those westerns of yore, adopting similar recipes and formulas, but without anything even nearing the result.Lovely scenery, but most of this film goes to the dogs; by which I mean that the best of this film are the huskies and other dogs making up the sled-teams in this rather contrived effort to emulate what was once an admired cinematographic subject matter. My personal smorgasbord breakfast was in Stavanger, after having slept on the floor in the breakfast room, as our night-flight from London arrived around four o'clock in the morning. I woke up amidst hotel guests' legs wandering about sampling the relishing feast of what is a genuine Norwegian product: smorgasbord.This film is not a genuine product of any kind. I am now awaiting impatiently a Chinese "western", an Egyptian version of "Dallas" or even a U.S. version of "Fanny och Alexandr" (sic) not to mention a British version of "Hable con Ella".Apart from that I have always loved Norway: perhaps because it was my first foreign country (1962), but especially because the people are so kind, friendly, civilized. My mountain trip walking in the Jotenheimen still remain clear in my memory all these years later - and it even snowed on my birthday (August)!I think I will go and listen to some music by Edvard Grieg ......... as this film is not worth the trouble.