Movie review: Beautifully shot 'Everest a moving adventure

Movie review: Beautifully shot 'Everest a moving adventure - Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal lead a large cast in “Everest,” a disorganized dramatization of the 1996 events on Mount Everest, when guides from two climbing companies and their clients encountered epic storms that stranded many of the climbers on the mountain and led to eight deaths. Of all the failures of imagination and execution that bring the film down, the crucial one is writing. If this oft-told tale of courage and folly is seen as a summit to be achieved, the script not only never makes it to base camp but seldom rises above sea level.

Clichés abound. “Let’s climb this thing!” one guide calls. “You know what they say,” another remarks, “it’s not the altitude, it’s the attitude.” But “Everest” is an entertainment; you don’t go to it expecting poetry. (Although visual poetry is a reasonable expectation, given the subject. We’ll get to that issue too.) A clue to the essential problem lies in an early snippet of dialogue at base camp, when a guide tells his clients “Eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we trek,” at which point the camera cuts to the group climbing into a huge helicopter that thunders up toward the mountain.

Source : WSJ