Everest

Having just this week returned from climbing all 19,341 feet of Kilimanjaro, I find myself intimately capable of reviewing "Everest", the new thriller from Icelandic director Baltamar Kormákur.

Based on a true story from 1996, Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal play Rob Hall and Scott Fischer respectively, rival organisers of commercial climbing ventures whose businesses involve training well-paying clients at Everest Base Camp and then taking them to the summit to experience the 'ultimate high'. When the climbing season of 1996 becomes hugely crowded, including a rather obnoxious team from South Africa, the two rivals decide it is in the interests of their clients to combine forces and attack the mountain together.

We are introduced to some of the clients including Texan Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), second-attempt postman Doug Hanson (John Hawkes) and Japanese mountaineer Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori) chasing her seventh and final major mountain summit. Supporting the teams is hen-mother from base camp Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), medical helper Caroline Mackenzie (Elizabeth Debicki from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.") and hard-man Anatoni Boukreev (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) who eschews the use of such luxuries as oxygen. To add dramatic tension to the situation, Rob Hall's wife (Keira Knightley) is heavily pregnant with their first daughter.

In an extremely hostile environment, as a storm passes through, the film neatly characterises how a single impetuous decision can have devastating consequences.

The action scenes in the film are well-executed with a number of vertiguous shots and heart-in-the-mouth moments, neatly escalated by Dario Marianelli's effective score. At its heart this is (without remembering the details of the original news story) a "will they, won't they" survival story of the ilk of "The Towering Inferno" and other classic disaster movies.

However, despite the long running-time and relatively leisurely built-up, I found there to be a curious lack of connection between the viewer and most of the key players. Perhaps this stems from the fact that you know they were all fully aware of the potential dangers? Or perhaps that the mountain seems a bigger character that any of the humans involved? Whatever the reason, it's only the future parental responsibilities of Hall that really resonate and make you root for him as opposed to any of the other characters.

Some of the hardest special effects to pull off are those that depict the natural world (as opposed to Krypton, Asgard etc), and in this regard the team led by Jonathan Bullock (from the Harry Potter series) does a great job. Whilst the "top of Everest" was in reality a set in the Pinewood 007 stage, you'll well believe a man can freeze there.

As such, this is a decent and entertaining telling of a true-life tragedy that will definitely work better on the big screen than the small.

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I think the main problem with this movie is a loose focus. It seems like they tried to make a disaster, drama and documentary stories at the same time but failed to develop any of that properly. But the good things first: stunning scenery, overall tension and a few really great scenes make this movie worth watching without a doubt. It is just somehow not working as a single piece. With a fast start you expect some eventful action to follow but there's nothing like that. The characters developing is limited to a couple of sentences excluding Rob Hall and Beck Weathers what makes others a little more than forgettable 'guys who die first'. For some reason, Scott Fisher, being a smart capable mountaineer is shown as a careless hippie-like person, Anatoli Boukreev as a cliché tough Russian playing garmon in a tent, Beck Weathers as a hardly-realistic guy from Texas. But it doesn't matter anyways as when the masks put on it's really hard to follow who is who and and their position on the mountain, especially on descending. The whole day of May 11 is clumsy and hardly could be learned from the movie, on the summit the story switches to Rob completely and gets distractingly touchy-feely then slowly turning into the aftermath. The drama feels a bit out of place when other participants dying with little or no attention. I was disappointed. The most vivid scene of the movie turned out to be shown in the trailer (crevasse ladder). Another Beck Weathers scene was really powerful too, but otherwise I didn't feel the pressure of surviving, the height itself (the stormy clouds could be seen from 2000 as well), an incredible effort to even try to step on that track.

Andre Bredenkamp writes about Everest climb: "You get completely disorientated. I had to keep reminding myself I was climbing a mountain. Every step of the way I had to try to motivate myself. At that altitude I took at least 10 to 15 breaths each time I moved one foot."

So if you really want to feel the height I would rather recommend to read the books about that night as this movie failed to show it properly.

"Everest" is a true-life story about a very bad year for those trying to ascend Mount Everest. While folks dying there is NOT unusual (heck, the mountain is apparently littered with dead bodies of those who have failed), this was a particularly bad year and the film does a good job of recreating the hellish climb and conditions the folks went through in order to check this dangerous feat off their bucket lists.

While I thought everyone in the film was foolish, the filmmakers did a great job of making you feel as if you are there....no small feat. So, technically speaking the film is brilliant and making it must have been an awful experience in many ways. As for the story, it's also compelling even if I thought the people were foolish....and this actually surprised me. My only fault with the film is that it would have been nice if the characters had been more fleshed out and multidimensional. Still, it's well worth seeing...and must have been incredible to see on the big screen as it's quite a spectacle.

I managed to watch this on an HBO channel while hanging out in the Colorado Rockies for a few days. It is a pretty well filmed story of the tragedy on the Everest climb in May 1996. Several people died, including some experienced guides, when the weather turned mean. Perhaps the best part of the movie is the first half, showing the people and what it takes to train and pay for such an adventure.

I remember it because Beck Weathers, a Dallas area physician, was one of the men in the expedition. He had some grave difficulties and was left for dead on the mountain. However he stumbled down the mountain in the morning, badly frostbitten, eventually losing part of his right arm plus all the fingers on his left hand, parts of both feet, and part of his nose. But he survived in what turned out to be a most expensive and life-changing experience.

I believe I'll stay on my comfortable couch and watch it.

Got the chance to see Everest early in IMAX 3D. I'll start off by saying this, if you get the chance, definitely see this movie in IMAX. It adds to the experience and you feel like your on the mountain. That aside, let's dive into one of my most anticipated films of the year.

Everest is chalk full of star power. Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley, Jake Gyllenhaal, the list goes on. Everyone is believable in this hostile environment, going from optimistic and adventurous to mortified and forced to fight for their lives. Each character is given a back story, some more drawn out and centered than others, and you get attached to most but not all of them. When the emotional blows hit, they hit hard for some, but not as much for others.

The visuals are, as you might have guessed, stunning. The shots they get of climbers and the way the camera gives you an an idea of how dangerous this is are breath taking. The cinematography is definitely award worthy. IMAX only added to it, putting you in this environment and taking you along for the ride.

This film really did it for me because I have always been fascinated by Everest and the journey it is to make it up to the top and back. If there is a Netflix documentary about Everest, I've watched it. I even watched the one about the story told in this movie. What this film does so well is it immerses you into the environment as well as gives you characters to care about. It's all tied in well together.

At times, the pace is a bit slower than expected and the tones shifts from serious to light hearted are a bit messy. But that stuff doesn't bother you in the moment, your just wrapped up in the intensity of the story.

Overall, Everest gave me exactly what I wanted. It was intense, emotionally powerful, and the visuals were beautiful. It's not perfectly structured, but it sure is engaging. As someone who has studied the mountain, this offers a brutal look into how much time and energy is out into a trip to Everest, and how quickly things can go wrong. Definitely worth a trip to the theatre.