Director: Julian Gilbey
Writer: Julian Gilbey
Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Thorp, Hannah New
With rock climbing movies steadily entering the mainstream in recent years, it was only a matter of time before the flurry of prestige entries faded into B-movie territory. Summit Fever, from British director Julian Gilbey. , dabbles in adventure, disaster, and romance, but lacks depth or emotional nuance altogether, resulting in an overlong, cheesy mess that indulges in exactly the cheap-climbing clichés that the best directors have striven for. to avoid. The plot is about 22-year-old Michael (Freddie Thorp) and his friend Jean-Pierre / JP (Michel Biel), avid mountain climbers who spend a summer in the Franco-Swiss region of Chamonix to mark the so-called Big Three: Matterhorn. , the Eiger and Mont Blanc off your bucket list.
Michael, with a tragic past and reserved demeanor, is the more risk-averse of the two. But JP's influence, plus the accessories of Chamonix Leo (a jerk Ryan Phillippe) and his girlfriend Natasha (Hannah New), push him to prove himself in the mountains, and he manages to reach the top of the Matterhorn with relative ease. Between expeditions, he also embarks on a romance with French skier Isabelle (Mathilde Warnier). Meanwhile, snowboarder Rudy, struggling for a gym route before tackling Mont Blanc (excuse me?), and Bea, a rock climber/bartender looking for something spicy to secure sponsors, meet up. join the team later.
Even before the group's climactic climb of Mont Blanc, the film is full of dead bodies: Michael and Isabelle encounter two dead climbers during a ski trip (for a movie about climbing, there are sure to be plenty of ski scenes), while that the local releases. The lone hero, Damien Roux, falls to his death during a highly publicized climb as fans watch through binoculars. This last scene feels especially tasteless given the care documentarians Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi put into their film Free Solo to avoid capturing that very real possibility on camera. It's a creepy, naive moment that Gilbey tries to turn into a commentary on the business side of escalation, which isn't entirely believable, given that the characters are actively trying to attract sponsors. Even the climbing brothers aren't safe: on a doomed run down the Eiger, Leo and Natasha are fatally hit by choss and falling rocks.
It is true that serious climbers, especially free soloists and alpinists, are tempting fate with each expedition. What does that do for the friends, loved ones, and companions they leave behind? How do climbers deal with survivor's guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder while pursuing their passion? Gilbey could have explored all of these questions and more, but that would be a very different movie. Instead, JP presides over a drunken memorial for the couple telling the crowd that at least they died doing what they loved. Days later, he is back on the wall, berating Michael for being a victim of the flashbacks and telling him that climbing is the best way to honor his fallen friends. It's no wonder JP is a rock climber, as he has the emotional range of a bucket of chalk.
Two-thirds of a nearly two-hour movie, Michael, JP, Rudy and Bea finally get ready for Mont Blanc. Things immediately go awry: a falling rock breaks Bea's arm. A huge storm changes direction and heads straight for them. Rescue helicopters are on the ground due to strong wind. The remaining half hour or so is just cheesy as hell. The unlucky Bea is struck by lightning in the middle of a sentence. Michael is confronted by a mysterious dark figure who is definitely not his dead sister. Isabelle, who is helping her friend Claude with the rescue mission, doesn't seem to realize that she would make a much better boyfriend. When the sky finally clears, she and Michael part for good after he tells her that he's going to walk away from the climb and she wisely turns him down. The final scene is her crying on a bus and him, what else? - Free solos. They didn't seem like tears of relief, but they should be. As for the audience, the film's only redeeming feature is its beautiful alpine scenery, but viewers had better save two hours and watch a Microsoft background instead.
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