Everest

Based on true events, this rather beautifully shot film tells the story of Kiwi Rob Hall (an adequate Jason Clarke) who ran an exclusive adventure agency that took well-heeled climbers up Mount Everest. In 1996 he decided to team up with accomplished but rather enigmatic mountaineer Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). What now ensues are a rather join-the-dot series of predicable escapades as the mountain decides that it's had enough of these messy and polluting human gadflies on it's slopes, and so it fights back - impressively and decisively. That leads us to the problem with this - the characterisations are seriously undercooked. I didn't really feel that I knew any of them, nor did I actually find - especially with Gyllenhaal - that I cared whether they survived or not. That might be a testament to their acting skills - some creating an aura of complacency and arrogance that well deserved their just desserts, but for the most part the script and the story were just all a bit flat. The cinematography is astonishing though, with actuality of the Nepalese base camps and of the rather benign looking mountain itself. It features quite a notable supporting cast, but again they offer little to beef up the sense of personality here or give us any real sense of the danger, teamwork and camaraderie that must have prevailed in real life. It is watchable for the imagery, and it also serves to remind up that mankind is pretty insignificant when the planet decides to stir itself against us, but as a piece of drama it's all just too lacklustre.