EVEREST

Everest

Grade: B

Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, John Hawkes and Michael Kelly, also featuring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robin Wright

Premise: Multiple competing teams of hikers trying to reach Mount Everest’s summit on May 10, 1996, are waylaid by a terrifying, deadly blizzard

Rated PG-13 for constant intense scenes of peril, and emotional content

Everest, a new true-story-based feature about one of the deadliest days in the history of earth’s tallest mountain, is an interesting case in which the film is not directly “based on” any particular book, though some five published books have detailed at least some of the events depicted in the film. Some of the details about who did what are hazy. Ultimately, the movie depicts the events of May 10-11 1996 and the days preceding, when a total of thirty-four climbers attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, a reported 29,029 feet above sea level. While most made it to the summit, some did not return because of a powerful blizzard that hit just below the summit in the afternoon on May 10, turning already barely-endurable conditions into a nightmare of dwindling oxygen, avalanches, slippery ice and snow, and frostbite.

Directed by Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormakur and brought to life by a large cast, including five Oscar nominees and several other familiar faces, Everest, like many true story films, is a riveting-enough film that ultimately makes you more interested in the real-life story than the movie. Though, I suppose, even if there hadn’t been a blizzard, it would still be compelling, as it makes the viewer wonder, watching people who can barely breathe or move toiling up a snowy mountainside, what compels someone to put themselves through this just to get to the top of a mountain? As one character says, “You’re suffering now, but, for the rest of your life, you’ll be the guy who made it to the summit of Mount Everest.”

But is it worth it?

Plot

In the Spring of 1996, New Zealand-born mountain climbing specialist Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) was planning to make his fifth trek to the summit of Mount Everest, helping a new bunch of adventurers and thrill-seekers experience the ultimate thrill on Earth, before heading back home to be with his wife Jan (Keira Knightley) when she goes into labor. His clients—who each paid him a hefty sum to help them realize their dreams—are a mixed bunch, each with their own stories. Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) is a Texan example of machismo, climbing Everest mostly because his wife (Robin Wright) doesn’t approve of the idea. Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) is a drifter who nearly made it to the summit once and is desperate to do so again—his dream has captured the imagination of folks back home. Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) is a writer who wants to give the world in-depth personal insight on this ultimate expedition. Yasuko Nambo (Naoko Mori) has already climbed six of the world’s seven highest peaks and wants the complete set.

Rob Hall’s team—called Adventure Consultants, headed by himself and Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), who oversees base camp about half-way up the mountain—turns out to be one of a handful of groups making for the summit on May 10, 1996; another is rival group Mountain Madness, led by the gregarious American hotshot Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). Rob and Scott end up deciding on a reasonably amicable alliance due to sheer number of hikers and the need to get to the summit by 2:00 p.m., the usual turnaround time, in order to get down the mountain and inside their tents (with their plentiful oxygen supply), before the sun goes down and the weather gets likely worse. Along the way there are deposits of oxygen canisters that need to be placed in case of emergency, ropes that need to be rigged, and local sherpas who need to be recruited to help climbers make the most treacherous passes.

There’s a reason one in four Everest climbers dies. With such thin air and frigid temperatures, exhaustion, hypothermia and windburn begin to take their toll. Some people’s lungs just can’t take it. Others’ eyes or muscles begin to give out. The weaker climbers who need to use their oxygen more begin to run out. Some people are too slow to make the peak in time but claim they will die trying, causing some faster climbers to have pity and slow down to stick with them. Others are sick enough to be rushed down the mountain by macho hikers who then rush to try and catch back up with the group. All this happens even before a huge blizzard hits just below the summit, blasting the exhausted hitchhikers with gale-force winds, pelting snow, early-onset darkness, and, of course, diving temperatures.

What Doesn’t Work?

Everest takes a while to get going, feeling early on like either a documentary or a movie with a clear over-abundance of characters, most of whom are dark-haired, bearded men with only a handful of lines each. A lot of technical terms or mountain lingo is used—“Hillary Ridge”, “above the summit”, “below the summit”, “south summit”, “the face”—to describe things that are, to the viewer’s eyes, mostly indiscernible patches of rocks and snow. The movie begins with the pre-climb team meeting and then hustles forward several weeks to get to the main action of May 9, 10, and 11, which can be disorienting. Sure, the movie tosses the audiences a few anticipation-building nuggets (“Humans are not meant to function at the cruising altitude of a 747—your bodies are literally dying up there”), plus it’s impossible to not be intrigued by the idea of achieving such a hallowed achievement, but it gets hard to really care when you see scene after scene of people climbing mountainsides or scaling ropes, so heavily bundled that you can only maybe tell who’s who because of the color they’re wearing. There are too many characters to go around. Distractingly, the same extended shot that pans from the hikers toiling up the mountainside to the summit high above them is used twice in the span of about twenty minutes. And, after building up a huge head of steam and sense of emotion and anticipation, the movie unexpectedly (and, I would argue, somewhat unfairly) hustles to its conclusion and casually drops a few bombshells on the audience just before the end credits. 

What Works?

While Everest isn’t the same kind of sensory thrill as, say, Gravity, when you sit down and think about it, it’s an undeniably spectacular achievement. It’s almost impossible to imagine how, exactly, this movie was filmed, with such a thorough, convincing sense of atmosphere. The visuals are by turns breathtaking and terrifying, and it’s not hard to believe the men and women toiling onscreen are truly in discomfort and pain even before it all hits the fan when the blizzard comes. I saw the movie in 2-D, but there were no moments to me that really stuck out as “pop-out 3-D” moments, so I would imagine the 3-D is pretty immersive; that would probably add a little to the spectacle.

I will say that, despite having so many characters and taking a while to pull the viewer in, Everest is very well written and directed in that most of the characters and storylines you were actually able to grab onto in the first half become crucially important in the second half. In fact, it’s appropriate that, once the first party of climbers reaches the hallowed summit of Mt. Everest—in a well-done, slow-panning shot—it feels like a switch has been flipped, and the movie is much more epic and exciting from there on. There are a multiple scenes audiences will watch on the edge of their seats or through their fingers, and others that could very well bring a tear to the eye.

As was the case with Black Mass, the true-story-based film I saw and reviewed last week, Everest is somewhat mystifyingly full of recognizable actors despite having, for the most part, relatively few juicy dramatic parts. I wondered if they all came on board due to interest in the script or interest in the real-life story—though it occurs to me now the studio likely noted that the film would need familiar faces for audiences to latch onto and thus paid name actors to make the film more marketable. Just like Black Mass, the story behind the film is more interesting than any particular part, but the actors in Everest commit themselves admirably. Jason Clarke, who seems to be everywhere lately, is solid in the lead, recognizably mostly thanks to his strong Down Under accent, but Emily Watson and Josh Brolin have the showier parts that form the real backbone of the film. Jake Gyllenhaal and Robin Wright are somewhat wasted in tiny cameo roles, but Keira Knightley nearly steals the movie in just a couple of scenes with a cousome heart-wrenching moments as the beleaguered, terrified spouse back home.

Content

Everest is impressively clean for a PG-13 film, with no innuendos or sexual content to speak of and, even more impressively for a film about people constantly in distress, almost no cursing that I can remember. Of course, it’s the harrowing circumstances in which the protagonists find themselves that make the film intense. Early scenes of a few people coughing up blood due to an adverse reaction to the thin air prove just the beginning—no details are excessively gory (though one wince-inducing image depicting horrible frostbite will remain etched in one’s mind), but there are a few shock moments as people fall or even, simply, slip, because, in those circumstances, being separated from the group or finding oneself at even a slight disadvantage can prove fatal.

Bottom Line

Everest looks great and tells a powerful, thought-provoking, heart-wrenching true story. As a movie, it takes a while to warm up, though most of the second hour of this 121-minute movie is as engaging and riveting as you could want. A large cast with a number of respectable actors acquits itself well, though most of the actors have only a few scenes. And if you’ve ever thought that you might want to climb to the summit of Mount Everest, rest assured this movie may make you re-think that ambition.

Everest (2015)

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur 

Screenplay by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy

Rated PG-13

Length: 121 minutes

BLACK MASS

Black Mass

Grade: B

Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Corey Stoll, David Harbour, Adam Scott, Jesse Plemmons, Rory Cochrane, Dakota Johnson, and Julianne Nicholson, with Peter Sarsgaard and Juno Temple

Premise: Notorious South Boston criminal James ‘Whitey’ Bulger increases his empire of crime under the veil of immunity he received due to his agreement to become an FBI informant.

Rated R for constant profanity, bloody violence and disturbing images

Black Mass, based on a book of the same name that detailed the rise of real-life criminal James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, is the most Boston-accented movie I’ve seen in a while. In fact, I can trace a direct connection between this movie and The Departed, another film about cops/agents of the law and career criminals set in Boston. Like Black Mass, that Oscar-winning film featured a huge cast of notable actors all barking relentlessly in ‘pahk the cahhh’ accents. Also like Black Mass, that movie made the idea of the cops, the FBI, or anyone else agreeing to deals with criminals who wish to become “informants” a fairly poor idea given the possible (and, this film argues, likely) repercussions of granting streetwise criminals a feeling of freedom. But, unlike The Departed, Black Mass is based on true events.

Plot

In the early ‘70s, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger (Depp, in blue contacts and under a lot of makeup) was already a noted criminal, having spent nine years in Leavenworth and Alcatraz prisons and tending to "take care of" people who got in his way. The much older brother of a senator, Billy Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch), don’t-call-me-Whitey-or-else kept his dealings relatively on the DL. Then the ties he’d formed with good old “southie” paid off when ambitious young FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), with whom the Bulgers had grown up, offered ‘Jimmy’ immunity as an informant—Jimmy, who hated the idea of ‘rats’ or ‘informants’, considered it an ‘alliance’—if he helped the FBI bag the Boston branch of the mafia, which was based on the north side.

Jimmy, it transpired, did lead the FBI right to the house of the local Mafioso, but the FBI agents (Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott, David Harbour) around Connolly slowly begin to realize Jimmy is abusing his place in the “alliance” by expanding his criminal activities, to the point that he is soon tied to the murder of the head of a million-dollar business in Oklahoma. And after Jimmy’s young son (Luke Ryan) and elderly mother pass away, leaving him with lots of criminal associates but no one with whom he feels truly close, he becomes more unhinged and wanton in his killings. As the crimes continue to escalate, Connolly--once a stud for making the “alliance” that landed the FBI the mafia--begins to feel the noose tightening, his claims of “southie ties” and “southie blood” paling in comparison to the reign of terror he’s helped unleash.

What Doesn’t Work?

I would guess we’re going to see four or five more movies with the same general appeal as Black Mass between now and mid-January—i.e. the season in which awards contenders are released. That would be films based on interesting, catchy real-life stories that transpire over a number of years. Such movies are innately interesting given their ripped-from-the-headlines, history-making content, but the movies are often no more than competent. These real-life stories that take place over a large expanse of time tend to leave little room for character development, strong relationships, or even, sometimes, a particularly strong narrative arc. One of the people with whom I saw Black Mass claimed during the end credits it was “different than I thought it was going to be” and “kinda boring”. While I can’t imagine anyone claiming Mass was “crap” or “a waste of time” or the worst movie they’ve ever seen, you might hear a lot of watered-down, lackluster “praise” like “it was well-made, and well-acted”. That’s exactly Black Mass. The film has its strong points (and I’ll get to those), but anyone expecting The Untouchables or The Departed or another hip, groovy cops-and-robbers film with a lot of action is going to be disappointed.

Also, something that didn’t quite work for me was one of the film’s main selling points—Johnny Depp in blue contacts and under a lot of makeup meant to depict him as an aging, balding, white guy from southie. As soon as I started seeing him in marketing material for the movie months ago, to me, it just felt like a gimmick. There’s an argument to be made that Depp doesn’t sound like, act like, or, obviously, look like his normal characters, and that may well please fans who have felt he’s coasted in recent years playing eccentric, accented, fantastical characters that were all seemingly just “Johnny Depp in a Different Accent and Colorful Costume”. Despite what’s obviously a pretty bang-up makeup job, I still felt distracted the entire film that Depp's makeover, with his lighter skin and ice-blue contacts, was more a cool attempt to disguise an actor than a really transformative event. If you see the film, you be the judge.

What Works?

I’ll say that Whitey Bulger’s story is interesting and it can get one riled about not wanting the cops/FBI to make the same mistake of creating “alliances” with Bad Guys just so they can catch Really Bad Guys, but the real reason to see Black Mass is its sprawling cast of recognizable actors. Depp is the just the tip of the iceberg (and I wonder if it was the chance to work with him that drew in all these other notable faces). This movie is loaded. Will any of them be making the rounds during the golden weeks of awards season? We’ll just have to see.

Depp, who, it must be said, convincingly speaks the accent and owns a couple of bravura scenes in the second act in which he terrifies the crap out of the audience and the other characters on screen just by talking quietly and gesturing, might be in the Best Actor conversation, though I would argue the role isn’t quite showy enough (and the movie probably came out a little too early for him to not be drowned in the tide of contenders in upcoming movies). If Depp’s name remains in awards-consideration conversations long enough, his chief co-star, Joel Edgerton, deserves to be in those conversations with him (albeit for the Supporting Actor category). In what’s probably his best role to date—and coming off his recent joint success directing and starring in the heralded suspense thriller The Gift—Edgerton perfectly plays the part-patriot, part-sleaze who’s blinded by “southie ties” and, later, corrupted by fame and success. Edgerton is almost a co-lead, in fact, and he’s terrific.

Recent Best Actor nominee Benedict Cumberbatch also has a notable role as “the most powerful politician in the state”, Jimmy/Whitey’s little brother Billy. Although he amazingly disguises his strong native British tones for “southie” speak, the role is ultimately rather thankless. You wonder if the popular, acclaimed actor was just really drawn to the script or the story or the possibility of working with Depp, and thus accepted such a part.

The supporting cast is a who’s who of supporting actors from TV, like Adam Scott (Parks & Rec), Jesse Plemmons (Breaking Bad), and Corey Stoll (House of Cards), and recognizable lifetime supporting actors from movies like Kevin Bacon and Peter Sarsgaard. A few others make strong impressions in just a handful of scenes, like Dexter-look-alike David Harbour as an increasingly-conflicted FBI agent, and Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Grey) and Julianne Nicholson as Whitey and Connolly’s conflicted spouses, respectively. Finally, some praise should be handed to Juno Temple, who has exactly two scenes, but they’re two that will have the entire audience on the edge of their seats, peering between their fingers. It should be noted that, despite the movie’s overall slow pace, it does begin noticeably ratcheting up the suspense in the second half—the audience can feel the noose tightening almost as much as any of the characters.

Content

Black Mass isn’t quite as bloody or shoot-em-up violent as you might think, given that one of the reasons the movie is officially Rated R is “Brutal Violence”—in fact, the main reason the movie is rated R is the F-word-every-sentence dialogue. That said, the violence the film does contain is often gut-wrenching, including two close-up violent murders (one of which compelled me to look away) and one particularly disturbing scene in which we don’t see the murder directly, but we hear the victim trying to struggle and scream as they’re slowly strangled to death. For a “slow” or even “boring” movie, you might be surprised how tense you are during the latter stages of Black Mass.

Bottom Line

Black Mass has an interesting story to tell about a real-life criminal—so interesting that the end credit captions of what happened to the surviving major participants in the film prove arguably the most interesting part of the entire two-hour affair. But, as a movie-going experience, it’s not particularly entertaining. Anyone expecting a full-on cops and robbers shoot-out will be disappointed. The movie also has scant romance and only the merest touch of dark (dark!) humor. That said, Depp headlines a deep cast of recognizable and solid actors which should prove intriguing to any real movie buffs out there. It’s not a hugely-entertaining time in the theatre, but I won’t say you won’t be affected.

Black Mass (2015)

Directed by Scott Cooper

Screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth

Based on the book by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill

Rated R

Length: 122 minutes