Alaska Movie Review #1: Iron Will

I went on a spree of adding Alaska-related movies to my Netflix queue, and decided that as I plow through them, I should comment upon them. The first one is sort of a disaster, unfortunately. Last week I made my coclerks watch Iron Will, in preparation for the Iditarod, but it turns out the movie is not about the Iditarod, or about Alaska at all.

Is the movie about Alaska? No. But it is about a real sled dog race that occurred only once, in 1917, between Winnepeg and St. Paul.

OK, so could the movie loosely be considered "Alaska-themed"? Yes.

Does it capture the Alaskan spirit? Most definitely.

Filmed in Alaska? Nope.

Cheese-factor? Off the charts. There was an evil foreigner cackling Austin Powers-style, but it wasn't supposed to be funny. And the tagline is "The Uplifting True-Life Story Of Courage, Determination And Triumph!"

Does the movie lend itself to a good drinking game? Yes. Such as: every time a character said something cheesy about following your dreams, every time the Native American character said something cryptic/metaphorical, and every time Will tried to communicate verbally with his dogs.

Any final comments? I enjoyed watching it, but mostly because I liked it a lot when I was younger, and because it had Kevin Spacey.

Hopefully the subject of Alaska Movie Review #2 will actually be about Alaska.