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Great Film overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

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.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Krakauers book was superb. Sadly this movie was utterly appalling. It received the 'Holywood' treatment and suffered greatly as a result. Compare this mish-mash of a movie with that brilliant movie 'Touching The Void' In short you cannot make a comparison. The wooden acting in Into thin air bordered on the laughable, and I literally squirmed with embarrassment watching it. I switched the movie off before it reached its climax. I gave my copy to a couple of friends who agreed with me. What a shame-This could have been a riveting account. Sadly I believe that the producers of this movie were attempting to cash in on the sensational-explosive reports that came through in 1996.

Although I will agree, the movie was not exceptionally made, I'd like to encourage people to look beyond that to the true emotional heart of the movie. It has changed my life. This might sound melodramatic, but I can assure you it is not. The first time I saw the movie, I was ten years old. I fell in love with the characters and afraid of the mountains. A few years later, I read the book, and what interested me the most was actually the Sherpas. Up until then, I had been, y'know, good little Catholic girl. I read about the Sherpas, and I decided to convert to Himalayan Buddhism, I fell in love the the mountains (but not mountaineering), and here I am, it changed my life, because it made me see the true emotions. My favorite scene is and has always been when Rob calls his wife. I always cry when I watch that, and I am not the crying type. I love this movie... The only thing I would change would be to mention the other climbers who were on the mountain, at least in the epilogue, especially the 'villains' as portrayed by Krakauer in the book, Ian Woodall and the South Africans, and the other Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness climbers. Some people were saying stuff about the movie was unrealistic, some of the stuff that actually happened, such as Beck Weathers not having gloves on...in his book he says he took his gloves off. (A book I'd encourage everyone to read: "Left For Dead" by Weathers...surprisingly well-written, engaging, humorous...) All in all, I love this movie a lot, but I agree, it could have more attention to detail... by the way, guys, you try and shoot a movie on Mount Everest, or at least ask David Breashears how hard it is.

As someone who has read Jon Krakauers novel I was really interested in this movie although I did not expect much and how right I turned out to be. The movie is extremely rushed, we are barely introduced to the expedition members and already we go up to the summit. In only a few days of course because nearly everything concerning the preparations, the partially really amusing incidents in basecamp, the acclimatisation was cut out of the movie to show us a rush, no a blitz up the summit. The other expeditions, especially those responsible for a lot of the disaster because they were completely incompetent and inexperienced from Taiwan e.g. and the Indians who perished in the storm are ignored (Indians) or have minimum appearance (Taiwanese, I hated these jerks when I read the book). And although I am not an alpinist myself I did not believe a second this movie showed us Mt. Everest but some mountain in a much lower mountain range (actually Austrian Alps). I mean they are supposed to stand on the highest summit worldwide and in the background you see at least one clearly higher summit, how cheap is that? Well it is obviously as cheap as this movie was although the actors are really trying but they cannot create sympathy for their paper-thin characters with the few lines they got from this poorly written script. But I simply cannot take (or even stand) a scene seriously where a professional mountain climber in the midst of a snowstorm in the death zone takes of his gloves, breathing mask and other protections for no reason whatsoever...only perhaps because we shall see his face's expressions in a death scene? Too inaccurate for a documentation and not good or interesting enough for a movie-drama. And that the other 7! deaths of this day were not even mentioned in the epilogue was quite tasteless. Because the movie was fairly entertaining and the actors at least tried 3 out of 10.

The book in which this film is based was a good read because of the events it described in the adventure of climbing the highest mountain on earth, Mount Everest, in the Himalayas. This version of the novel has a look that said "Movie of the Week" all over it. The direction, by Robert Markowitz, tries to involve us in the adventure, but it doesn't quite succeeds.The film has an episodic look. Almost every scene ends in a fade out in order to move to the next person being portrayed. There are things that don't make much sense, like watching an experienced climber, like Rob Hall, taking off his gloves in that kind of environment. Also, the pathologist Beck Weathers is seen without that protection and hat, suffering from frostbite as he makes an amazing descent into the camp.The ensemble cast do a passable job about the expedition.