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Despite a few sluggish passages, The Endurance is a generally well-crafted and compelling account of a true-life story. Director George Butler and his crew deftly intersperse the different source materials -- archival footage and still photos, contemporary footage of the ship's route, radio interviews with survivors, talking-heads interviews with a polar historian and descendants of survivors, and diary excerpts read by actors -- to create a straightforward, linear account of the voyage. This is a fairly conventional approach for a documentary, but it works fine in this particular instance, and there are several reasons to watch this movie. One reason is to see Frank Hurley's striking photographs and 35 mm footage from the expedition (which can also been seen in the 1919 silent film South); these images give The Endurance a sense of immediacy that raises it above the standard historical documentary. Another reason to watch this film is to learn more about Shackleton himself. The Endurance's hagiography seems a bit excessive when it emphasizes Shackleton's courage and tenacity while downplaying his crew's accomplishments; but it is refreshing to see a film about a strong-willed explorer whose obsession with personal glory didn't prevent him from understanding the value of people's lives. Above all else, this film is a portrait of a leader; the viewer learns how Shackleton arranged haircutting competitions and gramophone concerts to preserve morale, persuaded disgruntled crew members to follow his orders, and drove his crew to remarkable physical feats that enabled them to survive. While the movie doesn't provide a lot of background information on Shackleton or his crew, it does place their experiences in a broader historical context and describes (albeit briefly) how the values of the age of exploration were changed by WWI. Unfortunately, the latter part of the film is somewhat of a letdown because it covers the part of the voyage when Hurley had to stop photographing; the visuals aren't as compelling because of the relative lack of archival material. Nonetheless, the story line itself is engrossing enough to hold viewers' interest until the end.