Everest
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur
Written by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy
Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Michael Kelly, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, and Jake Gyllenhaal
Set amongst the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, Everest tells the story of a group of climbers who face disaster on the descent back to base camp. The film is hardly the harrowing story of courage and survival that one might expect from a movie such as Everest. Although, the movie tries to make it feel like that kind of story, the story of Everest just is not on that level. Everest is a group of climbers who encounter bad weather on their climb, which is a standard for a trek up Mount Everest. The only reason this particular story, of all the similar stories, is because of how heavily chronicled this event was when compared to the others, Into Thin Air, The Climb, etc. The disaster from ‘96 does not hold the distinction of the deadliest incident on the mountain.
Everest dealing with a story of mountain climbers is bogged down in the ascent up the mountain, spending just over half the run time on the ascent. The descent is the most interesting part of the film and relegated to the last act and a half of the movie. The film could have focused the second two acts on the descent, and then the story would have felt like the kind of story the filmmaker was trying to tell with the movie.
To Everest’s credit, the film contains a strong ensemble cast, each of whom delivers excellent performances. As well as beautiful cinematography, which appeared to be shot on location in real mountains somewhere, as I doubt they shot on Everest.
While Everest is not the kind of harrowing story one would expect, it is beautifully shot. Everest receives 3/5.
