Eight Below is an adventure story about a young man and his relationship with his team of eight sled dogs. Jerry Shepherd (Paul Walker) is a guide stationed at a research facility on the edge of Antarctica. His main job is to look after the research scientists on their excursions from the camp. Because the terrain over which he must take the scientists is often treacherous, with hidden crevasses and thin ice, dogs and sleds are preferred over the faster but heavier Skidoos.

A scientist, David McClaren (Bruce Greenwood), arrives late in the Antarctic summer to search for a meteorite that has fallen to Earth not far from the camp and might be the geological find of the century. Despite the season’s increasingly dangerous conditions, Shepherd is pressured by McClaren and his boss to take McClaren out to where the meteorite is thought to be. Dogsled, of course, is the only way there.

All does not go well. The two are forced to return early because of an impending storm, and on the way back to base McClaren falls through thin ice into freezing water. Shepherd and his dogs save McClaren, then transport him back to base through the storm. Shepherd suffers extreme frostbite and, along with the injured scientist and the rest of the base, is evacuated by plane to a larger station with hospital facilities. His eight dogs are left behind until a return flight can be made. But another major storm convinces the US military to evacuate all Antarctic camps until the following spring. Despite Shepherd’s protests, his dogs are left to die.

This sets up the second half of the film, which centers on the dogs’ attempts to survive the Antarctic winter and Shepherd’s attempts to organize a rescue mission.

Director Frank Marshall resists the temptation to cast Shepherd’s boss and the military as bad guys. Shepherd’s boss is not incompetent, uncaring, or oblivious to the dangers faced by the team, and he believes the search for the meteorite is worth the risk. The military leadership’s position is that humans are more important than animals, and so the dogs must be left behind. The only one who doesn’t see it that way is Shepherd.

My only real gripe with Eight Below, which was filmed partly in Greenland, is that the setting looks too balmy to be Antarctica. I doubt that the birds that become one of the dogs’ food sources would decide to conveniently rest near the Antarctic settlement as winter approaches. And though there is tons of snow and the landscape is fairly rugged, the scenery lacks the brutal, frigid desolation depicted last year in the spectacular documentary March of the Penguins, which was filmed in Antarctica during some of the harshest winter storms imaginable. Consequently, I never quite believe that the dogs are in such a desperate situation. But perhaps I’m being unreasonable in expecting the human and animal actors to suffer as much as those poor Emperor penguins.

Nevertheless, Eight Below is a good family film. Children will like it, and adults won’t be bored.

• Go Back