Péril en altitude

This film is a waste of digital imagery! Imagine, the hero ventures up K2 in a K-Mart parka with a fur edged hood no less. In one scene one "climber" (I say that oh so tongue in cheek) belays another by just standing there (he is tied onto the rope though)while his buddy holds a hundred feet or so of loosely coiled rope in his hands between the "belay" and the prospective climber.

Oh man, this flick is sooooo bad, I almost wept. Oh, the aforementioned climber falls down a crevasse, is hanging there wearing his crampons, then is hauled out without them. I mean, these things are strapped to your ankles so you can't loose them. The ice axe technique and cramponning (no front pointing at all) is pathetic, and crawling up, no, along snow slopes reminded me of a drunk in the gutter finding his way home. Speaking of axe technique, when a guy fell down a slope, instead of using the appropriate technique of rolling over and gently applying the point as a brake by applying ones weight, he lies on his back flailing helplessly at the snow. If that axe had gripped, it would have ripped his arm off.

All those really great mountaineers now sadly perished, will be rolling over in their graves (if lucky enough to have one).

'Nuff said, this film should be burnt! It's a disgrace!

Hard to imagine why a group of people would assemble to produce this. I just watched it on Pay Per View. I was in the mood for a "thriller", and the most skilled artisan involved in this production was the one who made the trailer look like it referenced a passable film. I do occasionally like to watch "rubbish" films, like the random Airline disaster... The ones where someone with the fear of flying lands the airplane with one wing, no wheels and after all the crew die after all drinking coffee spiked by a scorned lover, while callous Corporate overlords cover up the shoddy maintenance schedule of the aircraft.

But... not this...

Another commenter points out all the flaws relating to mountain climbing. The science is just as daft, the technology even worse and the political scenario's take the biscuit... So the UN sanction the creation of a doomsday satellite network, all controlled by one 4 inch remote control device thats guarded by, maybe 3 guys...

I may have seen a worse movie in my life... But I cant think of one, right now.

The movie could have been an action packed sequel to Cliffhanger if Stallone wanted to do it.The movie even starts out like cliffhanger with one of the main characters loosing someone on a mountain climb.

After this, the basic premise is that of the best mountain climbers in the world being hired by the united states military to retrieve a weapon that crash landed on said mountain during a winter storm before it accidentally goes off. Of course, these climbers have to convince that guy that lost his love one in the beginning of the film to join the group. To add to the danger, they have little time to get there and someone on the team is willing to kill them in order to get the weapon for themselves.

It's a decent plot for a low budget action flick co-starring Nia Peeples who got her action chops on Walker Texas Ranger.

The special effects are kinda cheesy and make the movie laughable at times. Though the climbing scenes were okay despite the fact that a lot of it really looked like it was done on s sound stage, sometimes the action sequences were too complex for the FX department.

An okay action movie that could have used a little more action and less campy effects.

An unashamed Z-grade mountaineering flick, directed by a man (Jim Wynorski, hiding under a pseudonym) better known for making trashy T 'n' A movies and with a storyline that's more than happy to rip off VERTICAL LIMIT. If you like watching overly familiar, silly movies loaded with stock footage, awful plotting and some outrageously poor effects, you've come to the right place.

Things begin with a supposedly dramatic sequence set atop a sheer cliff. It soon turns out that this is a direct rip-off of CLIFFHANGER's famous opening scene. From here on in, we get a silly, half-baked storyline involving a futuristic satellite weapon that looks like nothing more than a cheap Rubik's cube. There are some outer space shots that look awfully familiar to the ones in UNDER SIEGE 2, and a squad of Russian terrorists whose tendency toward self-destruction makes them some of the dumbest ever shown on screen.

Eventually, the plot gets around to sending a bunch of would-be heroics up an impassable mountain in Tibet in a race against time (yawn). No surprises that there are some more dastardly betrayals, some dodgy Russians and a token black guy whose only purpose is to get bumped off ASAP. The high-rise heroics make use of plenty of sub-par CGI and characters don't bat an eyelid when long-time friends are decimated by stock-footage avalanches.

Of the cast, lead Costas Mandylor is the most familiar from his appearances in seemingly dozens of SAW sequels. He's supported by Linden Ashby (who was a one-time action hero in the likes of MORTAL KOMBAT, although his acting hasn't improved since then), and the pretty but vacuous Nia Peeples. Aside from some low-rent machine-gun action, there's not much going on here, leaving this a Z-movie to be endured rather than enjoyed. Still, there's far worse out there even if this is below average by genre standards, although that's not a recommendation.

Sure, look at the cast, look at who directed, know it's a straight to DVD release and figure the couple of bucks to rent it is a gallon of gas not in your tank. But go with the gas in your tank than the gas coming off the screen. This is just a variation on the 'Cliffhanger' story of an expert climber who loses a female climber to an accident, gives up climbing, then is coaxed back up by circumstance. In this case it is over some gimmicky Rubik's cube device that's sitting atop K2 in the Himalayas (as played by a Canadian mountain stand-in and played well). Mandylor and Peeples and a few others are hired by the President to get their butts up that mountain and retrieve that cube before the clock ticks down and it fires up satellites around the Earth to destroy the world (which is absurd since no satellites have the ability to fire laser beams that would destroy entire cities). Nia Peeples still looks good and does well as a feisty fellow climber. Nobody else makes an impression (unless you enjoy the humorously thick Natasha accent of one of the Russian climbers). There is some decent avalanche footage and other location shooting that gives the film some authenticity (none of that horrible process screen or computerized imagery). And the big finish had some good elements but it was all but killed by the stumbling direction and suspenseless score. Too bad. But I looked at the cast, and I looked at the director, knew it was a straight to DVD release, and I spent my money... so what was I thinking?