A Winter Western with a curiously rushed ending

RELEASED IN 1996 and directed by Nils Gaup, "North Star" is a Western that takes place in Nome, Alaska, during a gold rush in 1899. James Caan plays the love-to-hate mogul who denies mining claims to foreigners and attempts to kill a half-breed Indian (Christopher Lambert) for the claim to a cave filled with gold, which the Natives use in their ceremonies. The half-breed ends up abducting the mogul's woman, played by the beautiful Catherine McCormack, who you might remember as Wallace's doomed wife at the beginning of "Braveheart" (1995). The... read the rest.