Top-flight cinematography by Salvatore Totino, deftly edited by Mick Audsley, lends gravitas to Baltasar Kormákur’s tale of mountaintop disaster, based on real-life events from 1996. Jason Clarke is the leader of an “adventure consultants”’ climb beset by bad weather and overcrowding. The climbers are a mixed bag, ranging from Josh Brolin’s gruff Texan, Beck Weathers, to John Hawkes’s amiable but ailing postal worker, Doug Hansen, and Naoko Mori’s Yasuko Namba, a Japanese businesswoman dedicated to summiting the highest mountains of the seven continents.
For the most part, screenwriters William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy (the latter co-wrote the physical endurance tester 127 Hours) attempt to avoid the sentimental tropes of the disaster movie, although radio contact with distant partners leaves both Keira Knightley and Robin Wright simply waiting for tear-jerking phone calls. Emily Watson is terrific as the base camp controller trying to manage the unfolding chaos, and it’s her scenes that pack the greatest punch, her face and voice a pitch-perfect portrayal of alarmed restraint. Powerful sound design effectively accentuates the sense of stormy isolation, giving the mountain the last word.
