Review: Everest

Everest (2015) Directed by Baltasar Kormákur. Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes. IMDB says: “A climbing expedition on Mt. Everest is devastated by a severe snow storm.”

I love a great hike through the woods. Nature is beautiful and it would be a shame to live on this planet and not enjoy and see as much as you can. There’s a difference between that and looking at nature’s most dangerous wonders and saying “eh, I’m better than you”. No, you are not better than an 8000+ m tall mountain. Claiming so is ridiculous and possibly a sign of insanity. Hence my feelings of anger and horror at watching this group of climbers attempt the amazing feat of summiting Mount Everest. Not to say Everest is a bad movie, it is actually pretty good, if unremarkable. It just incites extreme feelings of frustration throughout the running time.

Rob Hall and Scott Fischer (Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal) were each guiding clients on an expedition during the Mount Everest 1996 season when they experienced unexpected issues while summiting the mountain. The film also covers the weeks leading up to summiting where they prepared the climbers of different experience levels for the physical feat. It is an interesting process of hiking to the mountain in Nepal, participating in cultural traditions and rites, and doing some last minute training to acclimate to the elevation. Having no knowledge of all this, it was fascinating to learn about the process and the capitalization of climbing Everest.

Among the group’s climbers, were Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) a mailman living a simple everyman life who dreams of doing the extraordinary, Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) a doctor who sees climbing as his freest moments, and Jon Krakaeur (Michael Kelly) who was writing a piece on the climb for Outside magazine. There’s also an amazing woman who was crossing off her last of the Seven Summits, Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori) who despite seeming like one of the most interesting people in the group did not receive much attention. This films boasts an expansive cast that includes all the people who work to make these expeditions happen along with climbers. During this particular season they had an unusually large number of groups attempting the climb at the same time, and you really get the feeling of overcrowding and confusion.

This movie is told as a dramatic tale of survival amidst disastrous weather and questionable decisions. It has great scenes of tension and horror that kept me consistently engaged. There’s breathtaking cinematography of the mountain and it really gives a visceral impression of the experience. The physical wear on the body looks absolutely horrible, only made worth it to the few that get those short minutes of glory on the summit. It’s hard to appreciate watching people attempt this incredible feat considering the high chance of death and injury. If it was based on fiction you could separate yourself more from the characters, but since it’s true I was mostly left feeling upset about what I’d seen.

The movie does everything just well enough – there’s quality direction and acting and the subject matter of Mount Everest is interesting. Everest could have been great if it dived further into the complications of the commercialization of these climbing trips and the mistakes made under duress on the mountain. It’s pretty captivating stuff and considering they had a journalist literally in the scenes to ask those tough questions, it seems like a very unfortunate loss to the screenplay. The farthest he digs is why climbers put themselves through the physical hardships, and that’s about it. Maybe they were too concerned with paying respect to certain people that they didn’t want to get critical. Understandable but it is to the movie’s detriment.

Overall, Everest is a decent movie, with a few riveting scenes and a solid ensemble. It just leaves too much of the thought-provoking components out leaving this to be a more of a somber retelling than a hard-hitting piece of cinema.

FTS SCORE: 75%