R_Alex_Jenkins

There's only so much you can do with a movie like this in my opinion. It's pretty much a tale of getting to the summit (or not) of Mt Everest and the perils and pitfalls encountered along the way, so you won't be surprised by anything that takes place. I wasn't.

What this movie therefore requires is great acting and inter-personal relationships, which need to be 100% believable and sympathized with, all of the time. And if you don't know anything about the characters - the Japanese lady who has climbed six out seven peaks, with Everest being her ultimate goal, for example - then why would you even care if she makes it or not, other than completing a statistic? It doesn't matter at all. Which is not a good basis to ground a movie on.

Everything about the movie felt superficial and focused on studio effects and realism, which were really good and surprisingly realistic. You may ask yourself, how did they even film that, but I honestly didn't give a rats a** about who made it up or down. They only person I cared about was the character played by Josh Brolin, who gave a good performance as someone to care about in depth, but the rest? Jake Gyllenhaal, for example, just some mad-cap climbing guy going up and down Everest seventeen times a week just because he can, as if that helps me connect with his peril?

Don't get me wrong. You will enjoy this spectacle and it will nicely fill up a couple of hours in your schedule, but some of the dreary tears and insipid acting made me cringe more than once. And Keira Knightly should have been up the mountain for God's sake, getting frost-bitten to potential death, instead of weeping like a little helpless wifey at home over hubby's potentially fatal plight. Why she was so misused and miscast is anyone's guess?

Enjoy it for what it is, a shallow high!