2017 Film Review: The Mountain Between Us (2017)

Directed by: Hany Abu-Assad
Written by: Chris Weitz, J. Mills Goodloe
Starring: Idris Elba, Kate Winslet
IMDb Link

The Mountain Between Us is plain butter spread too thinly over white bread. The movie has a predictable story, awful dialogue, bad characterisation with not so much as an arc as a straight line, very little tension, and even performances that are held back by a surprising lack of chemistry, but the thing that brings all of these bad aspects together and makes them that much worse is the protracted running time, which draws out so much of the movie it almost bored me to tears.

*This is normally where I'd put the Spoiler Warning, but there's so little to this movie that there's nothing for me to spoil*

Alex (Winslet) and Ben (Elba) are two strangers whose plane crash on a mountainside. Unable to make contact with the outside world, the two work together to survive the harsh environment.

The actual 'survival' aspect of this movie is actually not bad. While they are few and far between, scenes of Alex nearly getting mauled by a cougar or falling in to icy water serve to remind the audience that these characters are in some sort of danger, when so little else of the film does so. Likewise, the movie early on uses its snowy backdrop and shifting camera angles to hammer home the disorientation of the characters against their terrain, evoking a mild frustration as we're left just as unable to get out bearings as the characters. However, the survival takes up a disappointingly small portion of the movie, and between these beats of tension there's only long stretches of almost nothing happening. This wouldn't be a problem if the movie used this time to explore the characters as people or build a rapport between the two, but the film doesn't really do much of that either.

This is the really surprising part of the movie, that Winslet and Elba turn in weak (for them) performances that have very little chemistry between the two. In the long stretches of nothingness the film fails to build up their relationship in any meaningful way; the two don't really bond over anything in particular bar their mutual need to survive, and even that doesn't go beyond them both caring enough to make sure the other survives too. There's more going on between each of them and the dog that joins them than between the two of them.

It gets worse when the empty space in the movie isn't used to develop either of the characters as individuals. All we know about Alex is that she's reckless, a little selfish, and that she's a journalist, and by the end she's reckless, a little selfish, and a journalist. The lack of character arc goes for Ben too. Neither of these characters have much to do for themselves, and the only two character points that could have acted as catalysts for genuine change or conflict in one or both of the characters are essentially glossed over to make it fine for these two characters to have sex. Ben has a message left behind by his ex-wife that suggests that he's controlling, which may act as a key conflict point between him and Alex? Don't worry about that, his wife dying on his operating table will serve as a revelation that will make you forget all about that while also making it completely alright for you two to get busy. Alex has a fiance at home? Don't worry, the movie forgets all about him and when he finally comes along it takes a few minutes for her to leave him for Ben. This movie pretends to be a survival movie while just being a considerably worse romance.

That said, even if the story wasn't paper thin, and the actors had turned in good performances with a shared chemistry, the movie would still have to contend with its absolutely atrocious dialogue. The two characters don't really talk to each other, they just say things out loud. It's so robotic in process, like there were internal moments from the novel this film is based on that the writer decided to turn in to spoken lines. An internal conflict about Alex's work is introduced as a bit of a reaching response to Ben asking for her to take a photo; it's not actually a bad idea, and it does come up again later in the film, but it's delivered so strangely, and all at once, and the return to the idea is at a point where I was so bored and disengaged from the movie that I almost missed the fact that it was a resolution.

The one thing that I do give credit to the movie for is its good use of the beautiful setting. The whole movie is well shot, never failing to take in the scenery, the cold snowcapped mountains and the frost-tipped forests and the icy lake, it's all very easy on the eyes.

The Verdict: The Mountain Between Us is vapid. Its story is so predictable and foregone that the experience is ultimately pointless, and just as sinfully the movie stretches it out for far longer than it needs to.Elba and Winslet are good actors, but they turn in performances that share almost no chemistry, while spouting painfully dull dialogue. The only aspect of this film that offers any satisfaction is its visuals, and they alone are not nearly enough for me to recommend this film.

Rating: 3.5/10

Published October 12th, 2017