Big, visceral and intense, this is a heart-stopping adventure, the kind of movie movies were invented for; see it in IMAX 3D if you can. During the 1996 climbing season on Mount Everest, eight people died because Everest had gotten commercialized and too many people were trying to get to the summit during narrow windows of opportunity. Jon Krakauer chronicled the disaster in his bestseller
Into Thin Air, though this is not based directly on that book; he appears as a character here, played by Michael Kelly. This movie may make things even worse on the mountain, since it’s such a spectacular experience that it may make some viewers hungry for the real thing. New Zealender Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Seattle-based Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) lead clients (played by John Hawkes and Josh Brolin, among others) to the top of the world, and the pain and the effort that goes into it is vivid and acute—but then to actually reach the summit is a thing of immense awe and pleasure. “Because it’s there” suddenly makes a lot of sense to those of us down here.
By
MaryAnn Johanson