EVEREST

GRADE: B-

Starring Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Emily Watson, John Hawkes

Screenplay by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur

Rated PG - 13 (violence, profanity)

Reviewed by Paul and Patrick Gibbs

As an IMAX 3D experience, director Baltasar Kormakur's Everest more than delivers. Spectacular location's and Salvatore Totino's superb cinematography put the viewers inside the film, making you feel as if you're actually climbing to the summit of the world's largest mountain. But the storytelling is sometimes a bit muddled, and the ending may leave you wondering why you needed to take the journey in the first place.

Relating the story of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, the film follows two groups of climbers. The first is lead Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the charismatic and eminently dependable head of Adventure Consulting, a commercial group which guides climbers to the top of Everest. The second group is Mountain Madness, lead by Scott Fisher (Jake Gyllenhall). Hall's group is accompanied by celebrated journalist Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), and of course the the groups are comprised of a disparate group of climbers with just enough personality to help us tell them apart without actually really getting to know them as people, such as Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a mail carrier who is on his second attempt at Everest, and Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), an amiable but clueless Texan. The overabundance of climbers trying to make it to the top at the same time leads to a traffic jam just as a potentially deadly storm is hitting.

The cast turns out to a be a major strength of the film, both because they are top quality actors who disappear into the film with realistic and low key performances, and because the sort of "spot the star" quality is a major help in keeping track of who's who. But between the sheer number of characters, the heavy coats and the heavy beards, it's still quite a challenge at times, and director Kormakur doesn't often pull off helping us understand the geography of which part of the mountain is which and who is where, though he succeeds admirably at making the environment palpably real and building the suspense. Perhaps the biggest difficult with the film lies in the fact that it's nearly impossible to make a truly satisfying film out of this particular true-life incident. It's not accidental that it's known as the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, not the Miracle on Everest. While the facts of the story are admittedly public knowledge and easily available through a quick search of Wikipedia, it occurred almost 20 years ago and is hardly fresh in the public consciousness. Everything about the film leaves the audience expecting a thrilling tale of survival and determination triumphing against the odds, but that's not what we get. And of course it shouldn't be. But with the heavy nature of the facts, combined with a lack of real insight into what caused the disaster, it's hard not to leave the film wondering what exactly you've gotten from the experience. 

All in all, Everest is a spectacular and often engrossing film helped along by an excellent cast, but it's far more distinguished as a visual and technical achievement than as a piece of storytelling.