IRON WILL

REVIEWED BY STEPHANIE VALE

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Because of: violence, thematic elements

Rated:

“Once in a generation an athlete pits himself against such overwhelming odds, that even the most jaded spectator finds himself cheering breathlessly…"

Birch Ridge, South Dakota 1917: Will Stoneman (Mackenzie Astin) pleads with his widowed mother, “I want to feel alive, I want to feel like Dad’s alive right here,” he puts his hand over his heart, “And I don’t, I don’t.  Mom, he was going to do this for me, now let me do it for him.” Referring to his father, who only recently had died in a tragic dog sledding accident, Will believes he has found a way to keep the family farm: a 522-mile dogsled race stretching across the country from Winnipeg, Canada to St. Paul, Minnesota, with a grand prize of $10,000. With the help of his Native American friend (and farmhand) Ned Dodd (August Schellenberg), Will convinces his mother to allow him to enter the race. Will and Ned train intensely for the remaining month, using the motto “run longer, sleep less.” 

Boarding the train to Winnipeg with his sled and his dogs (including his father’s champion lead dog Gus), Will carries with him with these three things: his mother’s fruitcake for nourishment, a homemade wooden whistle to signal the dogs, and two dollars in his pocket. Right from the very beginning the opposition is towering: the race sponsors, Mr. J.W. Harper (David Ogden Stiers) and Angus McTeague (Brian Cox) try to disqualify him from the start with a ten dollar late registration fee (the fast-talking and rankling of a jaded reporter named Harry Kingsley (played by Kevin Spacey) allows Will to remain in the race, while paying the other $8 of his late fee); the cruel elements alone that are enough to stop nearly any man in their tracks, and one of his fellow racers (a Swedish racer named Borg Guillarson with a mean streak a mile wide) taunts and threatens him and his dogs continuously. When Will asks Harry Kingsley, a newspaperman with Cane papers, why he helped him Harry replied, “Helping you is helping myself.  Having you in the race gives me something to write about. Gotta sell newspapers kid.” 

Driven by his own iron willpower and stamina to finish each day of racing to reach the required checkpoints, Will continues on: even when his fingers and toes are so frozen that he can no longer feel them, even when a fellow racer conspires against him, and even when the odds of his finishing the race look nearly impossible…Will’s unbelievable courage in continuing on is fueled by his slim hope that it IS possible for a seventeen year-old boy to win a 522 mile dogsled race on “the meanest stretch of land that God ever put together” (Borg).

“That boy has the heart of a bear.”

The language in this film consists of the word d*mn used about ten times and one use of geez, one of “…land that God ever put together…” and “holy” Chicago. There is drinking, cigar smoking, a dogfight (with a small bit of blood shown), a group of sled dogs attacks their owner, violent dog-racing, cheating, one man threatens another man with a gun, and one man threatens another man with a knife. Some of the content is too intense for young viewers, but all in all it is an engrossing family film. Iron Will is a moving true-life story about the determination and valor of one heroic young American. Up against seemingly impossible odds, “Iron Will” Stoneman strives on to achieve his dream: to save his parents beloved farm and go to college; and somewhere along the way, the seventeen-year old boy becomes a man.