A beautiful movie created by director Baltasar Kormakur, giving us audience a taste of climbing Mount Everest.
A great cast to start off with. Jason Clarke, John Hawkes, Josh Brolin, Michael Kelly and Jake Gyllenhaal leading the way. And a great supporting cast to help bring the audience in with the emotions through Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Elizabeth Debicki, Sam Worthington and Robin Wright.
The story built enough character development for us to feel attached to them, even smaller characters like Naoko Mori's Yasuko Namba. Their backstory should be based on their real selves.
We also got to learn about how people climb Everest, and how the camps were strategically setup to accommodate the climbers, who each paid quite a big sum just to have an experienced climber bring one up there.
The way Kormakur directed, you could almost feel what the characters were feeling. Especially that one scene when the storm hit Clarke's character. He was actually higher than the clouds until it enveloped him and literally hit him.
I was informed after the movie that Gyllenhaal's character was actually more interesting, but Clarke's character went behind his back to acquire the journalist Jon Krakauer (played by Kelly) to join Clarke's expedition. Krakauer later wrote the book which became a best-seller which I'm guessing this movie must be based on - though it's not listed as such on IMDb.
And in this movie, we never really knew what happened to Gyllenhaal's character or why he was as weak during that period. If they were going to put him in, a bit more backstory would have helped the audience relate to him more.
If you know the story, you'll know how sadly it ended. And the way the events played out, it really hit you hard as you witnessed the way things unfolded. I myself wasn't feeling very well before going into the movie, and after that, I took a worse turn.
So be prepared if you're going into the movie because it is really heavy... and cold.
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