Almost great, but not quite

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2015)

As far as films about natural disasters go, "Everest" is a league above its dumber cousins. Films like "Into the Storm" (2014) and "San Andreas" (2015) are often just showcases of destruction, lacking any real substance or complex characters. They're more concerned with luring as many people into the theater as they can with their special effects and promise of catastrophe. "Everest" has more intelligent ambitions.
The film follows the true story of Rob Hall (played by Jason Clarke) and his team on their expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest during the spring of 1996. Fighting through freezing temperatures and gale force winds, the team makes it to the summit only to be greeted by a storm preventing their descent, putting their whole expedition, and their lives, in danger.
"Everest" succeeds because it captures the camaraderie of those who take on one of the most difficult challenges in the world: climbing Mt. Everest. It takes a special breed of person to even consider such a trial and the film understands that. It imbues its characters with a romantic acceptance of fate; either they make it to the top or they die trying. The psychology of its characters is the most interesting part of "Everest" and its best asset.
But the film never fully delivers on that front due to the fact that instead of telling one story with Hall as the clear protagonist, we're told a number of stories, one for each of the men on the team. Featuring a large ensemble cast, the film briefly touches on the life behind each and every man on the mountain, desperately trying to make one just as important as the next; an impossibility for film with a 121 minute run time.
This is a shame because these fleeting glimpses really got me invested in each character. Hall is portrayed as a legend of sorts: the man to lead all men to the summit. His confidence and reassurance even had me believing that this expedition might be pulled off without a hitch. Others, including Beck Weathers (played by Josh Brolin) and Scott Fischer (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), are built up as equally fascinating people, and yet we only spend a small amount of time with each. This hinders the emotional impact of the film because we as the audience never get the full weight of any one character's story.
This shortcoming really comes into play towards the end of the film. When it comes to stories like this one, it's to be expected that not all of the characters you meet will live to see the credits roll. I won't spoil anything, but this holds true in "Everest," and because we are never given a complete picture of any one character, these deaths lack the magnitude they deserve. In fact, some deaths come and go so quickly, I barely had time to process what had happened before the film had moved on.
This unceremonious treatment of death hurts the film precisely because its characters are so magnetic. These men take palpable joy in suffering for their art, but because the mountain doesn't pause when it ends a life, neither does the film. Although I wouldn't say it tells its story with impatient briskness, "Everest" certainly never lingers on any one plot point long enough for it to really set in with the audience.
But, to the film's credit, even this doesn't totally sterilize the moving story of Hall and his team. The passion that drove these men to the highest point on the planet shines through whatever mistakes the filmmakers made and the great ensemble cast embodies that passion well. "Everest" may not have the shocking realism of "Gravity" (2013) or the emotional intelligence of "The Impossible" (2012), but it does have a lot of heart, a respectable quality that not many disaster movies ever achieve.