Nature’s warning signs are bright red and yellow patches. Hollywood has its own warning signs and Eight Below fair sparkles with them. It’s a post-1970 Disney production; it stars Paul Walker; it is about dogs; it was “inspired by a true story” as opposed to “based on a true story” (the distinction matters); it is reworked from a highly-regarded Japanese film but takes great liberties; and its posters describe it as “THE MOST AMAZING STORY OF SURVIVAL, FRIENDSHIP AND ADVENTURE EVER TOLD.” Hyperbole in capital letters is the curare frog of cinema.

Unexpectedly, Eight Below is not only non-toxic, it is quite a nourishing little meal. While far from perfect, Eight Below is still eminently watchable, and belongs to a class of film that has almost disappeared from our screens: the adventure movie. Like suspense films, the adventure genre has largely degenerated into action, usually dotted by self-consciously inventive obscenities, ridiculously large explosions, and lashings of CGI absurdity. Eight Below has no swearing, not a single explosion, and its one CGI scene does not live up to current standards of realism but is far more effective than most because it is so well directed that one’s sense of belief is carried by the intensity of the story that unfolds rather than the intensity of the graphic experience.

Eight Below is the story of eight sled dogs left behind in Antarctica during an emergency evacuation and how some of them survive the Antarctic winter. The Japanese film it is based on (Nankyoku Monogatari, better known to Western audiences as Antarctica) was visually stunning, but apart from its gorgeous scenery and evocative Vangelis score, I barely recall a thing about it. Antarctica is relatively true to the real story of sled dogs left behind when a Japanese expedition was abandoned in 1958 — only two of the nine dogs survived and how they managed it is still a mystery.

Eight Below was never going to follow the storyline or the detached Japanese style of Antarctica. Naturally it is aimed squarely at the family movie market. Still it makes some brave choices — at least compared to the usual Disney saccharine. The dogs behave like dogs rather than furry humans. Not all the dogs survive. Paul Walker is today’s Robert Taylor: a handsome leading man with very little charisma, but he is absolutely perfect in this role. It needed a low-key performance, and that’s exactly what Walker gives. Whether that is because he is only capable of low-key performances is beside the point. Bruce Greenwood, playing the film’s second key character, is allowed to be both heroic and unlikeable. And the dogs are left behind for perfectly sensible reasons: there was no room for them on the plane during an emergency evacuation and the planned return mission becomes impossible due to a combination of weather and logistics. There is no heartless bureaucrat trying to save money, no-one trying to sacrifice the dogs for their own career, indeed no villain at all except the Antarctic and circumstances.

The only serious flaws are Jason Biggs — who is fine when he plays it straight but overdoes the goofiness when he’s called on to be funny — and the fact that most of the scenes are shot in dazzling daylight despite the fact that much of the film is set in the Antarctic winter and should have been shot in darkness or twilight. The science is caricatured — apparently meteorites from Mercury have highly predictable locations and can be identified on sight — but if the details are silly, at least the search is for something of real scientific value. And of course, there is an overly sentimental reunion at the end, but not an unabashed triumph and the rescuers still have a large serve of grief to deal with.

Perfect? Not by a long shot. But it’s a compelling story told with understated dialogue and heaps of gorgeous photography, and not just the obvious ice shots you’ve seen before. (One spectacular image is the overhead view of a snowmobile racing across the deep green ice of a glacier criss-crossed by stark white lines.) And to top it all off, Walker spends a great deal of screen time in an ANALOG baseball cap. For that I can forgive a great deal, sad fanboy that I am.