a cowardly missed opportunity

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2015)

Icelander Baltasar Kormákur, whose career starts with 101 REYKJAVIK (2000), is another European talent recruited by Hollywood, after two mediocre Mark Wahlberg's star vehicles CONTRABAND (2012) and 2 GUNS (2013), his latest is an ambitious USA, UK and Iceland co-production retells the story of 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and it just opened this year's Venice film festival, and now a 3D format arrives in the local multiplex.
One initial question (for me at least) is what compels the climbers to engage themselves in such a perilous enterprise (especially those who are not up to the challenge)? The film only delves into it superficially, the central expedition team is called Adventure Consultants, lead by New Zealander expert mountaineer Rob Hall (Clarke), who shepherds his eight clients to climb Everest, among which there are two prominent participants: Beck Weathers (Brolin), an American amateur who states that depression is cloaking him like a black cloud, only through climbing, he can get that behind, as frank as he is, it is just typical escapist strategy; another one is Doug Hansen (Hawkes), a middled-aged mailman, a plain newbie in the game, but what he pursues is the populist American dream, to prove even an everyday man can achieve an extraordinary feat like that (with a discount on the fee being the key precondition), even though (as the film tells us), it will not only cost his life and unwittingly but detrimentally with the expense of other two pros who could have survived the calamity. Therefore, both cases are not wholesome to encourage amateurs to follow suit.
One can detect Kormákur's resolution to tell the story as authentic as possible, employs an ensemble cast to introduce at least two-dozens real-life characters (which means it is rather tough to recognise each of them in the end of the day), tones down the hyped catastrophic spectacles and allows the formidable nature being the invisible but merciless executor, human lives are really so puny in the face of it. Curbed by the real-event boundaries and out of the respect (or avoidance of legal litigation) to those who are still with us, it is understandable but also pitiful that Kormákur doesn't dare to venture into a darker side of what-is-really-going-on in the expedition on the human side - especially the clash with other teams and whether the tragedy could be avoided, say, if the team hadn't wasted their precise time waiting for ropes to be installed en route, or the sloppy weather forecast should also hold partial responsibility? - and whitewashes the personal schism among them. The only exception is Robin Wright's Peach, Weather's wife, during her brief scenes on the phone, betrays a relatively complex inner struggle could have thickened the plot, she is incredibly subtle in her discontent when Beaches calls her to confirm his adventure, and singles out an almost undetectable mixed feeling when she receives two life-changing phone calls, one informs Beck's demise and a later one about his miraculous survival. Whereas the rest of the bulky cast are either banally one-note (Knightley and her snot cannot save the thankless pregnant wife stereotype) or doesn't allot enough screen time to a thorough moulding, and you have Gyllenhaal, the most inspiring and versatile leading man in the Hollywood, in the line-up as Scott Fischer, the inexplicably suicide-inclining leader of another expedition group, clearly is the most interesting character, yet, Kormákur lets him slide into a man of no importance, this is unforgiven. Nevertheless it is delightful to see Emily Watson, who plays Helen Wilton, the base camp manager, is given a sizable role to be the direct emotional barometer of the situations, she is perfect, although it is not a big stretch from her under-utilised mother typecast in her recent filmography, after all she is the surrogate mother of all the group members.
Great effort has been deployed to lend viewers a vicarious feeling to witness the stunning scenery which can only be admired by the privileged few, however it also makes the problematic character-development a more rueful decision, the film has all that required for a viscerally compelling adventurer, the authentically-looking landscape, the grand SFX, a capable cast headlined by Clarke, a late bloomer to the leading-man-ship, why shortchange all the assets with a compromising narrative under the pretence of the faux-documentary approach? What a cowardly missed opportunity!