The Great Alaskan Race stars writer/director Brian Presley as Leonhard Seppala, a renowned dog musher who volunteers to run the longest leg of an emergency relay trip to deliver antitoxin to Nome, his far-flung Alaskan hometown on the brink of a diphtheria epidemic in 1925.
Based on actual events, the script is pedestrian and period-inappropriate, the acting is subpar, and the cuts between scenes abrupt and awkward. Rather than pack in the action and adventure that the title suggests, the film spends the bulk of its 87 minutes in a loop of poorly written dialogue as the townspeople of Nome fret and await the arrival of the lifesaving serum.
The 1925 serum run to Nome is a gripping story, but as The Great Alaskan Race, it’s a dramatization is far less entertaining than its Wikipedia intro and will almost certainly leave theatergoers underwhelmed.
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