EVEREST

3.5 stars (out of 5)

While it has better actors, playing, scripting and production values, director Baltasar Kormákur’s frostbitten drama nevertheless feels like a little like a ‘Disaster Movie’ – albeit one with real heart.

Drawn from the facts of the 1996 Everest disaster (and several books written by survivors), this follows Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), a Kiwi whose business it is to lead experienced climbers to the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal, and how he left home and his pregnant wife Jan (Keira Knightley) to help another group get to the top (that’s 29029 feet above sea level for those at home). And they’re a colourful gang: as well as an IMAX film crew and some amateur hopefuls, we also meet tough Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), laid-back Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), sickly Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), Andy ‘Harold’ Harris (Martin Henderson), John Krakauer (Michael Kelly) and Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori, the rare woman in the blokey bunch).

After a great deal of preparation and characterisation (considerably more than a ‘Disaster Movie’, but anyway), a crew of climbers set out one fateful day and, after several make it to the summit, the expected storm hits and they start dying, much to the horror of Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), Guy Cotter (Sam Worthington) and others back at base camp.

With a name cast and some haunting images, this is also memorable for its amazing 3D imagery, and for sequences where the players look to be in real danger, and genuinely freezing, exhausted, terrified and hypoxic. And you do have to ask yourself: why does a man (and it is mostly men here) climb a mountain? Well, good question…