BELATED REVIEW OF EVEREST

year: 2015 Score: **1/2

With an exception of Jason Clarke as Rob Hall, who made climbing up Mount Everest a hardcore vacation trend for intrepid tourists, there are a collection of famous and/or talented actors hidden by hefty beards and not having much to do with the plot: for example, Jake Gyllenhaal blends into the background consisting of several camps at each level of the arduous climb.

One of the more memorable supporting roles is Josh Brolin, who, in many films as of late, has played a sort of jerky antagonist: other than being blunt and not as tough as he talks, wearing a (sign of the times) DOLE/KEMP campaign T-shirt, and being proudly/loudly from Texas, he's a surprisingly humble guy with worried wife Robin Wright brooding at home (her HOUSE OF CARDS co-star Michael Kelly is also on board). Meanwhile, Clarke's Hall has his own phoned-in spouse; yet another famous actor (actress) hidden in a small role: Enter Keira Knightly, pregnant and also fretting about her husband's occupational peril, especially when, upon reaching the crest of the mountain, a deadly storm ensues, taking over the third act of this real life biopic with gorgeous exterior locations while the humans get lost in the mix... In fact, most of the time, with parkas almost completely obscuring already bearded faces, it's difficult to know who or who's not in serious trouble: making EVEREST a "modern" ALIVE, which was a popular 90's bio flick about a group of athletes who crashed on a snowy mountain and had to survive by cannibalism, all much easier to distinguish and, pun intended, more fleshed-out while EVEREST lacks palpable suspense or memorable characters put into serious jeopardy when we're really, truly supposed to care about their turnout: which is the most important aspect of any "disaster" film, other than an "all star cast" which, as already noted, is pretty much wasted here.