When an action film is based on a true story, as is the case with Everest, which covers the same events as Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air about an Everest expedition gone horribly wrong, it reminds us just how artificial most action films really are. If this were a made up story, all the characters we cared about (and certainly the ones played by the most famous actors) would live—with perhaps one shocking death thrown in to keep us off balance. But real life rarely provides such comforting narratives.
Indeed, Everest’s uncanny realism is a big part of what keeps you in its icy thrall. The film, shot in IMAX 3D, filmed on actual snowy peaks (mostly the Alps), and directed with visceral immediacy by Baltasar Kormákur, feels so true to life that watching it is something of a punishing experience. I say that with admiration: If you ever wanted to know exactly what it’s like to attempt to climb Mt. Everest, this film leaves little to the imagination. (Spoiler alert: It’s hellish.) Every aspect of the climb—the crunch of the ice, the death-defying heights, the bracing wind, the breathlessness felt at such high altitudes (where your internal organs are, quite literally, dying)—are all brought to vivid life. And the mundane aspects are depicted, as well—the months of acclimatizing, the medical check-ups, the need for oxygen tanks, the base camps set up all across the mountain.
Our hero is Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the greatest Everest guide in the business. Rich adventurers pay him upwards of $60,000 to take them to the top of the world’s most dangerous and elusive peak. Being an Everest guide is a double-edged sword: You have two jobs— getting your clients to the top of the mountain and keeping them alive—which often don’t go hand in hand. Hall is responsible and decent enough to never let his clients do anything beyond their abilities. But guided tours of Everest are a big money business and Hall has lots of competitors, including cocky American Scott Fischer, who has a slightly less protective attitude toward his clients.
There are lots of parts to juggle in this film and Kormákur does an adequate—if not quite expert—job of keeping them in the air. We get to know a few of Hall’s clients pretty well—there’s the wealthy Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), an aging adrenaline junkie who has left a wife and two children behind; there’s Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a humble mailman and carpenter who has tackled Everest before, coming tantalizingly close without summiting (Hall takes pity on him and gives him a discount); and there’s Yasuko Namba (Naoki Mori), a small woman who has nonetheless summited six of the seven tallest peaks in the world—Everest is to be her crowning glory. There’s also Krakauer himself (Michael Kelly), riding shotgun with Hall’s team and seeking answer to that unanswerable question, “Why?” On top of that, we have team members and Sherpas and clients of the other mountaineers, and various point people on the ground. Partly this is meant to convey the chaos on that mountain—it wasn’t just a terrible storm that doomed many of the climbers but the fact that so many were trying to climb at once—but it does get a bit disorienting. It doesn’t help that the climbers are so bundled up in parkas and hats and goggles that we sometimes can’t tell who’s who. (Memorize your favorite character’s parka color, folks!)
I also got the distinct feeling that a lot was left on the cutting room floor. Sam Worthington just kind of shows up, midway through the film, as a mountaineer friend of Hall’s who happens to be on Everest. Gyllenhaal’s part is surprisingly small, considering he’s the marquee name of the cast. There’s a female television reporter—a mountain-climbing dilettante, clearly—who is introduced and then all but forgotten. There’s a Russian climber in Fischer’s team that the film is curiously ambivalent about (it judges him for not relying on oxygen). And then there are the Put Upon Wives™ —played by Keira Knightley (as Hall’s wife) and Robin Wright (as Weathers’). Of the two, Knightley, whose character is pregnant, gets more to do—she even is able to communicate with Rob, via radio satellite, when he’s stranded on a remote peak. But Wright is all but wasted.
Still, all of this is secondary to the film’s great achievement: its ability to put us on that mountain. Once that storm starts and it becomes clear that not everyone will make it, the film will leave you gasping for air. Indeed, when it’s all over, you’ll feel like you need oxygen.