Great although with unbalanced character developments

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2015)

1996. Rob Hall says goodbye to his wife Jan. He and his team go to Nepal to guide clients to summit Mount Everest, at more than 8,000m. His clients include Beck Weathers; Yasuko Namba, who had been to six of the seven summits; a journalist Jon Krakauer; and Doug Hansen, an ordinary man enthusiastic about summit-ting Everest. They reach the Everest base camp at about 5,000m. Rob meets his competition team leader Scott Fischer who quips about Krakauer originally being Scott's client. The team gets to do three acclimatizing ascents to adapt to the thin air. On the first ascent Doug coughs, repeating his problem that made Rob turned him back last year. Beck calls home. His wife feels something strange about him since Beck never calls when on a mountain. On the second ascent Rob turns the team back for a storm. Rob did the same on the third ascent. But they get stuck on the Icefall region due to a crowding on the stairs. Beck almost falls on the stairs and Rob guides his hand, although Beck gets grumpy about it.
Rob persuades Scott to work together, to Scott's agreement, although there's friction between their Sherpa guides Ang Dorjee and Lopsang. May tenth, they go on to summit. After a while Scott goes back to base camp for a missing client. He then goes back up, despite Rob's advice. Past Camp 4 Beck starts having sight problems so he stays put while the others go on. Ultimately most of the them reach the summit. Scott tells Rob to go back first. Rob guides the pack down as his schedule arrives. He finds Doug late to reach the summit, but Doug persuades Rob to help him summit. Rob helps Doug, passing his own schedule. Soon a violent storm engulfs the summit. Rob struggles to guide Doug, who's now half conscious, to the Oxygen stash point, where they find none. Rob radios back for help and his crew Harold climbs back up to help them. Scott tells Lopsang to leave him due to him running out of breath. The rest of the team going down finds Beck and brings him too. Beck and Yasuko get separated in the storm while the rest of the team make it back to Camp 4. None is willing to go back out to help due to the storm. In the storm Rob and Doug shelters on a narrow ridge. But Doug rips his fastener in his hallucinations and falls to his death.
Harold reaches Rob with Oxygen but the cap froze. They have no other choice but to wait the storm out through the night. At night hypothermia catches on to Harold and he too falls to his death. In the morning Rob wakes up numbed down to frostbite. The team at base camp tries to motivate him by patching him to Jan. They send Ang Dorjee to find Rob but he turns back when the storm descends again. The base camp radio him this message and he talks again to Jan. Beck miraculously wakes up from the ice and walks himself back to Camp 4. Other climbers guide him back to base camp where his wife arranges a helicopter to come and pick him up. Rob, Scott, Yasuko, Harold and Doug died on the incident and their bodies are still on the mountain.
The story is good enough that it captures a balanced portion of the incident and the general view of the more dangerous side of mountaineering or summit-ting, particularly at Everest. The movie nicely spots a highlight at how summit-ting Everest has become a business, and how the lack of governance on that part of the world has resulted in the strong competition between guide teams and also dangerous crowding on potentially dangerous areas like the Icefall.
The first half still seem very nice If you sit yourself down and try to learn some new things about mountaineering. Even if you are actually a mountaineer, you can instead sort the true practices beside the gimmicks added to make the movie more dramatic.
I think the second half of the movie is where its real main attraction is. The struggle of the characters to survive and the harsh ordeal most of them had to go through seem very much in contrast to their confidence and mountaineering experiences at the beginning of the movie. The refusal of those who made it to Camp 4 to go back and help out also adds to the contrast.
Furthermore, for people like me who haven't read the book, this movie nicely gives a variation to our mindset about Hollywood movies' ending. It's now too often to see a happy ending in many Hollywood movies, even in disaster movies like the last "San Andreas", that people tend to generalize that a movie's ending will be a happy one where the characters get to go back to their lives. I have another friend who told me she is annoyed that the main character dies at the end.
The acting overall is quite good. A starry cast list helps very much. Although we don't get balanced character developments, at least the movie managed to present a believable level of acting. Jason Clarke did well in portraying Rob Hall as a 'hand-holder' as Scott says. Jake Gyllehaal, Kiera Knightley, Sam Worthington and even Elisabeth Debicki nicely adds to the factor that attracts our eyes to the screen for seeing familiar faces in the movie.
A solid score of 7 out of 10 is deserving for Everest (2015). A recommendation is definitely a yes to go and see it in the movies.