Having recently devoured 3 books on Shackleton, I was eager to see this. I won't repeat the comments made above, but I would like to second the comment about not enough time being spent on the actual adventure. This movie doesn't really give you nearly a sense of the actual suffering, dehydration, starvation, and just plain thrills and chills of what these men went through. (For this I highly recommend the book by Alfred Lansing - spare prose, yet an irresistible page turner that blew me away.) For example, most of the scenes at sea seem to be in absolutely calm waters, and many scenes on the ice are similarly serene, yet the book (whose author had access to all of the original diaries) tells of many days and nights of gale-force winds. I suspect the budget didn't allow for many special effects.
The book describes how the men's faces were blackened with soot from the seal blubber constantly being burned, yet you don't really see this in the movie. Also, the 3-man slide down the glacier looks like a joyride here; in the book it was a hair-raising act of desperation.
I would not recommend this as a starting point for discovering Shackleton - for this I obviously suggest the book. But as an adjunct which gives you a visual sense of the ship and the encampments, it's not bad.
The book describes how the men's faces were blackened with soot from the seal blubber constantly being burned, yet you don't really see this in the movie. Also, the 3-man slide down the glacier looks like a joyride here; in the book it was a hair-raising act of desperation.
I would not recommend this as a starting point for discovering Shackleton - for this I obviously suggest the book. But as an adjunct which gives you a visual sense of the ship and the encampments, it's not bad.