michaeljbrown62

The best audience for this movie may be people not familiar with the various and varying accounts of the 1996 expeditions. But the cinematography gives you a true feel of the riskiness of the environment: knife edge cornices, 2 foot trails with 5,000 foot drops, the seemingly endless ascent.

Having read most of those aforementioned accounts, the movie makes only brief exposition of the debated critical errors. Some are totally ignored. I was much more emotional reading the accounts. Feeling the gut-wrenching nature of the life and death decision made when an ascent or descent goes wrong. I didn't get that feeling with this movie.

But if you don't want to get into a debate over who made the most mistakes (Boukreev vs. Hall. vs. Fischer vs. Ang Dorje, etc.), it's a very good accounting of the events from the perspective of the Adventure Consultants' camp.

Always amazed to see the variety of reviews. How one can watch this and compare it to a Scooby Doo movie or call it a Bollywood knock-off, and others view is a critically acclaimed. Ahhh, the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, I enjoyed it for Kevin Smith's screen writing and the performances of Parks, Leo, Goodman, and Bishe. Parks' gospel singing was a plus.

It's not horror; it's not Tarantino. It's Kevin Smith. He's great at writing irony and duality in specific circumstances. There isn't character development, just characters that express themselves. I care about them because of what they have said, not what was said about them.

And how can you not love the Goodman soliloquy about the bloodhounds.

Just watch it. Like Smith says in his "Making of ..." video, what may seem like a bad movie for $20 in a theater cane be a favorite movie when you see it in five hours at home.