North Star (1996)

A Winter Western with a curiously rushed ending

RELEASED IN 1996 and directed by Nils Gaup, "North Star" is a Western that takes place in Nome, Alaska, during a gold rush in 1899. James Caan plays the love-to-hate mogul who denies mining claims to foreigners and attempts to kill a half-breed Indian (Christopher Lambert) for the claim to a cave filled with gold, which the Natives use in their ceremonies. The half-breed ends up abducting the mogul's woman, played by the beautiful Catherine McCormack, who you might remember as Wallace's doomed wife at the beginning of "Braveheart" (1995). The Winter chase is on!

There are elements of other Westerns here, like "Death Hunt" (1981), "Valdez is Coming" (1971), "The Far Country" (1954), “North to Alaska” (1960) and "Dances With Wolves” (1990), but that's to be expected. On the originality side, it's one of the few fully Winter Westerns of which I can remember beyond “The Great Silence” (1968) and “The Hateful Eight” (2015). Of course, films like "Will Penny" (1967), "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972), “A Man Called Sledge” (1970) and a few others have some fairly long Winter sequences.

While Caan's villainy is too over-the-top for my tastes (although he does it well), I found "North Star" to be a well-done Western, except that the final 11 minutes or so feel rushed. As noted above, I was impressed that this was one of the first Westerns I’ve seen that focused exclusively on Winter conditions. It goes without saying that shooting in the snow is way more challenging than shooting in other seasons; and even more so if the locale is mountainous. The locations, sets and cast are all first-rate even while the storytelling has somewhat of a comic booky Grade B vibe.

But the filmmakers seemed to hurry the ending. Maybe they wanted to just complete the project and keep it under 90 minutes; or perhaps they weren't confident with the closing footage and awkwardly tried to "make it work" in the editing room. But it’s not THAT bad and didn’t ruin the experience for me. At the end of the day “North Star” is a worthwhile ‘modern Western’ that attempts something unique even while being a pastiche of the genre.

THE FILM RUNS 88 minutes and was shot in Norway. WRITERS: No less than five scripters are credited to adopting Heck Allen’s novel.

GRADE: B-/C+ (5.5/10)