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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I'd like to add to the chorus of voices complaining about The Summit, a collection of poignant interviews, skillfully staged re-creations of actual events, and documentary photographs and film footage, all jumbled together into an almost incomprehensible mess. It's not as if this documentary about the tragic events on K2 in the summer of 2008 is poorly edited, it's more like it wasn't edited at all. Imagine watching a story that has been chopped into pieces, thrown into a blender, and then reassembled by someone suffering from the same hypoxic delirium that contributed to the deaths of some of the climbers. One is left with the feeling of having watched an interesting and compelling story that should have been told in a far more concise and straightforward manner. Unfortunate, too, because it's a heck of a story.

If a documentary should take its audience to somewhere they should never otherwise go, then this documentary is a startling success. Real footage shot at one of the most extreme places on Earth, on the deadliest day the mountain has ever known. The film's greatest weakness is a patch work of acted out fill-ins to help the story along, however, these are understandably necessary additions. Its extraordinary to have any footage at all from such a place. It will be a long time before we see another mountaineering documentary as real and epic as this one. Well done.

On August 2008, 11 mountain climbers die on top of the world second highest peak K2. This is a mix of interviews, documentary and recreations to tell the story of the eclectic mix of international teams of climbers. Also it has interviews with Walter Bonatti who is the youngest member of the '54 Italian expedition to summit K2 for the first time.This is such a compelling true story. The climb and the descend is very tense. The only problem comes with a confused recounting of any controversy in the last 15 minutes. The ending is about a search for what happened to Ger McDonnell. It seems necessary to concentrate much more on him for the whole movie. Since they're doing recreations anyways, it's probably best to just do a narrative story with Ger as the protagonist.

Some reviews have mentioned the disjointedness of the storytelling, and while The Summit is sometimes confusing in its recounting of the deadliest single day of mountaineering on K2, regarded by many as the most treacherous of the 8,000km peaks, what ultimately dooms this sometimes breathtaking film is its blatant agenda to idolize Irish climber Ger McDonnell.First, like many mountain-climbing films, the cinematography is simply astounding, and nearly makes up for its later flaws. There are scenes from the top of K2, the world's second highest mountain, that will leave you slack-jawed. K2's shadow in the late afternoon, hundreds of miles away in China, appears to rise out of the atmosphere like an Egyptian pyramid. Other passages, like the tricky negotiation of the Bottleneck, with a massive ice serac ominously looming overhead, will have you questioning the sanity of these climbers, much like Touching the Void and Into Thin Air (the book, not the TV movie).And it is during these times that The Summit is at its best--illuminating the folly of those who sacrifice so much and risk everything to climb a savage mountain such as K2. The interviews with survivors such as Wilco van Rooijen and Cecilie Skog will you have you scratching your head at the way they appear to simply shrug off the death of a fellow climber (Dren Mandić, the first of 11 fatalities) and continue their ascent. These interviews are expertly spliced with the comments of some of the Sherpas and high-altitude porters present that really have you questioning whether you would want some of these people climbing with you. These moments are interspersed with dramatic reenactments that are quite well done and heighten the proceedings.This is when The Summit is most effective--when it attempts to explore questions such as the motivation of climbing in a death zone not meant to support human life, the heroism (or foolishness) of attempting to save a fellow climber at that height, and the fragility of human existence in such a tenuous environment where one minor mistake can mean death.Unfortunately, this is a documentary with an agenda. Instead of collecting the facts, presenting both sides, and letting the viewer decide for him- or herself, the filmmakers set out to validate and idolize McDonnell. Now, none of us were there that day, and the very fact that the survivors themselves are not sure what happened on K2 makes the story even more alluring. But director Nick Ryan paints a heavy-handed picture that questions the veracity of Italian survivor Marco Confortola. One of the ways Ryan accomplishes this is to weave the story of Walter Bonatti into the film. Bonatti was part of the first ascent of K2 in 1954 but was not selected to make the summit, instead being assigned to carry oxygen to the camps. He was accused of using the oxygen by Achille Compagnoni which put the expedition at risk and for years was ostracized by the Alpinist community. Ryan somehow forces this into his theme of McDonnell's heroics, so in effect, the long-awaited vindication of Bonatti is ironically used to discredit a fellow Italian climber.Yet the use of Bonatti and footage from 1954 has the effect of confusing the viewer; simultaneously, Ryan fails to mention that the in-depth investigations into the disaster on K2 by NY Times writer Graham Bowley as well as Michael Kodas have concluded that Confortola's story is most likely true and the "evidence" cited by Ryan is inconclusive at best. Ultimately, the ulterior motives of the film destroys what could have been a beautiful and troubling examination of what drives men and women to risk it all to attain a summit like K2.