Here's a modern take on this 1968 epic: fantastic! Just got the BluRay release and it runs like an old David Lean epic with a title screen & music before the movie starts and, again, at Intermission. Performances are excellent all around, and the fX, all done prior to CGI, are remarkable. Suspense builds as Rock Hudson's nuclear sub streams North with spymaster Patrick McGoohan in tow, soon joined by a Russian defector, Ernest Borgnine, and a serious swat team led by James Brown (ex-NFL).Progress to the North Pole is slow and the sub is hindered by sabotage. The process of finally surfacing & crashing through the polar ice reminds me of similar scenes to come in Firefox a few years later. But our heroes are on a quest to rescue a cannister of spy film shot by a surreptitious satellite. To do so will be no picnic: watch for a great scene where a few Americans tumble into an ice crevice, which begins to slide shut. Ouch. Edge of yer seat... Horrible way to die: stuck & frozen in ice.Terrific story & cinematography. Based on the Allistair MacLean story. Highly recommended.

I saw the movie at the Cinerama theater in 1968...if you don't know what Cinerama was, look it up. It's kind of like IMAX but done with three projectors. Yes, now the fact that it is a set is rather obvious but then, just seeing this on a huge, huge screen was breathtaking. The movie holds up even though today's standards would have forced them off the sound stage and generate 4/5 of it with a computer. I thought the twist with the death of Jim Brown was cool, even now as I just saw it on TCM. The "oh well, we both accomplished our mission as best we could, now let's just walk away, no sense killing each other" finale...was interesting but not so sure I buy it. Another reviewer here asked why they just didn't blow the whole place up immediately and leave so no one would get the capsule, if they suspected that the capsule was there. First, the allies wanted the capsule because it had important Russian information on it as well. 2nd, they were looking to see what happened to the people there first, so they had to investigate. As an added point, Borgnine's accent was horrid. It went on and off and at first, it sounded like he was trying to do an Irish accent. Awful.

Then this is your movie. The entire first half seems like nothing more than technical blabber about the workings of the sub. The real mystery is not to be revealed until after intermission. However by then the audience suffering in the dark will be totally indifferent. The final confrontation is confusing and absolutely anticlimactic. I like Patrick McGoohan, but even his presence cannot save this 150 minute clunker. To top things off, the Arctic scenes look more like the set for a high school play than the frigid outdoors. In summary, "Ice Station Zebra", despite a respectable cast, is a total waste of a considerable amount of time. - MERK

Not that drifting away from the book matters, but the second part goes too awry in its own conception.The first part also fails to attract due to the more attention into submarine details & and the crew driving it. The dialogs are pretty good and along the line of the book, which was a genius work of literature & espionage. Alistai MacLean will remain one of my favorite writers but his novel seems to be bludgeoned in cold-blood by bad CGI and irritating twists.For crying out loud, referencing the cold war era & Cuban Missile Crisis just does not do justice to the base (i.e. Part 1). Although, the characters were very fine and I loved them playing. With a brilliant cast, Ice Station Zebra is more like a fabricated American-Russian tiff. The music, the direction, the screenplay all are average.BOTTOM LINE: Having read the book, this was a bad experience and with 160-minute running time, how about a NO?Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YESViolence: Strong | Gore: No | Alcohol/Smoking: Mediocre