Everest is a throwback to the old Hollywood adventure epics of yore, where you had a group of people, slogging it out in the toughest of terrain. The quest here however is not for some hidden gold or an ark, nor do the characters have to face rolling boulders or snake pits.
The characters here are more driven by the motivation to climb the world’s tallest mountain, why, "Because it is there". Everest does not really have any villians, the characters here have to battle something more tougher, Mother Nature herself. Based on the true life 1996 Mount Everest disaster, when 8 people were caught in a blizzard, the book "Into Thin Air"was a first person account of the disaster.
Visually speaking, the movie is a delight. The camera work beautifully captures the Himalayas in all their glory, and some of the scenes involing the precipitious drops, and canyons, can leave you dizzy. The majesty of the mountains is well captured, as well as that of the world’s highest peak. The blizzard scenes, as well as the ones where the lead characters struggle for survival are well shot. That said, the 3D was not really needed, pretty much a waste, I felt. This is the kind of movie you need to watch on the big screen or IMAX, would be criminal to watch it on a tablet or a DVD.
The first half takes it’s own time in setting up the characters, actually it just brushes though. So we have Rob Hall( Jason Clarke), one of the guides for Adventure Consultants, and his motley bunch of clients, a rich Texan Beck Weathers( Josh Brolin), a postman Doug Hansen( John Hawkes) who had been saving up all his money just for the expedition, Yasuko Namba, a Japanese woman, who had climbed 6 of the World’s tallest peaks, and whose dream it is to now climb Everest and Scott Fischer( Jake Gyllenhal), the guide for the other climbing party Mountain Madness. And you have Helen Wilton( Emily Watson), the base camp in charge.
The scenes showing the team members bonding, are well shown. But it is in the later half, the movie really picks up, as a sudden blizzard hits the team on the descent. This is where we see true heroism, tragedy, as the team members battle it out against Nature. There are not many thrilling scenes, but the very struggle of the team members keeps you hooked. And then as you see the tragedy unfold, you find yourself feeling overwhelmed. As you see the people fight it out, to survive, and each one losing the battle, you experience that wave of sadness.
That said, most of the characters remain rather under developed, this is a movie where the mountain peaks overshadow the human characters. Or maybe it was the director’s intention to show the might of Nature against human beings. All said and done, if you are tired of duelling robots, invading aliens or meteors crashing into earth, go for this movie, a perfect spectacle of human drama, emotion set against Nature.