L'honneur des grandes neiges

I'd expected to enjoy this movie a lot, especially as I'm a great Jurgen Prochnow fan. However, although he's competent enough in his role his character doesn't figure that much in the main plot and the rest of the cast are dreadful. If it weren't for the fact that there's a rape scene and some violence this would seem to be more suitable for children. All the tough outback settlers end up singing on a boat near the end! As it is, it falls between two stalls. It's too predictable and dull to entertain adults and too violent for the kids. All in all a very disappointing movie.

Borntraeger was simply phenomenal. I was flabbergasted. The rest of the film was remarkably in color. It was also tremendously not silent and with words that were possibly in English, although they might have been in Canadian.

The Other Side Of The Law (it's video title) is a depressing little melodrama telling the story of a man who, after avenging the rape and murder of his wife, disappears into the Canadian wilderness with his baby son, only to send him back ten years later for schooling and socialization, ripping scabs off long festering wounds and whipping up the resentment of the murdered rapist's sadistic son.

Strangely, this seems like a high-brow family film but with moments of fairly graphic violence, including a rape, that make this unsuitable for children.

The frontier atmosphere is great and expertly photographed but the melancholy subject matter is a bit hard to take, as are some of the actor's performances.

With the exception of the opening scenes, there's little action or suspense until near the end and not enough good dramatic moments to rescue it from total boredom.