A visually stunning feature offering a well-rounded telling of the facts, yet with underdeveloped characters that aren’t quite memorable.
From the director of 2 Guns, Baltasar Kormákur brings you a closer look of the 1996 Mount Everest expedition led by Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). A horrifying disaster as climbers became engulfed within a devastating blizzard that struck with little warning. Facing freezing temperatures and blistering winds, two teams of adventurers attempt to survive in one of the harshest environments known to men.
A biopic of incredible visuals, Everest presents a myriad of blunt and immersive exchange of dialogues between men and nature, as beautiful scenery shots and an excellent use of cinematographically enhanced perspective dazzle the audiences to appreciate the hardships that so obviously torment the climbers in a journey that could only be described, as the film so adequately did so, wretched.
It’s rare to see a sight in modern Hollywood cinema where little dramatization is involved in movies based on true stories, yet with a down-to-earth approach Everest somehow pulls it off with a documentary-styled introduction. What little fictionalization there is in the story was designed respectfully, as not every single detail of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster is verified, and with the aid of long time mountaineer guides David Breashears, Guy Cotter and David Morton as consultants, Everest is perhaps the closest to the truth of the event that anyone can hope for.
Though the dark lighting and the screen-smearing blizzard could frustrate some in the second act as the climbers begin to drift apart in the storm, it truly does deliver a prominent sense of men’s vulnerability, and though it may not so definitively cross the threshold to send chills down your spine, it would surely convey a piece of the desperation.
What’s lacking in a feature such as this is an immediacy in the character development, where we so clearly perceive the cast with an all-around ample performance yet as all characters seemed mildly entertaining and appealing there isn’t a major standout for audiences to delve their minds into and explore, and those character that do show a certain level of complexity such as Scott Fischer of the Mountain Madness fail to engage in the latter part of the story.
Overall, the results of Everest does display an emotionally satisfying outcome, however it never quite makes the leap from the summit into our bones largely because as a disaster drama, none of the characters seemed developed enough to make us feel the damage.
In theatres everywhere from 17th of September 2015 in Australia
MPAA Rating: PG-13
ACB Rating: M
Run Time: 121 min
-Henry Pan
An overzealous film critic wannabe, Henry Pan makes a trip down cinema lane once a week, in order to decrease his ever-increasing massive watch list.
