Rob has left behind his very pregnant wife Jan (Keira Knightley), who remains in their suburban home. Rob's clients include Beck (Josh Brolin), a determined businessman; and Doug (John Hawkes), an aging teacher who clearly is not in the best physical shape to conquer Everest.
There are many climbers that season, causing Rob and Scott to combine their efforts and teams. Rob's rule is that the turn-around time during the final climb to the top is 2 PM. The team must start climbing back down the mountain at that time, or they might not be able to return to the base camp before night falls, the temperature drops, and they could perish.
But everything begins to go wrong. Guide ropes and full oxygen cannisters are not where they are expected. Scott exhausts himself climbing and descending. Rob spends too much time getting to the top with his clients, breaking his 2 PM rule. A storm arrives. Suddenly, the lives of the team are endangered. Matters go from bad to worse, and still worse.
How others will see it. Everest had its share of A-list American actors in supporting roles. Nonetheless, the box office was better overseas, allowing the movie to eke out a profit. In America, the distributors preferred showings in IMAX theaters, which have a limited market.
The festival circuit was not generous toward the movie. It managed to secure a Saturn Award nomination for Best Action/Adventure Film, but that was about it.
Today at imdb.com, though, Everest has a respectable user rating of 7.1 out of 10, and a solid user vote total of 250K. The user reviews are generally positive, though some note that the ensemble cast meant that many characters were undeveloped. Others opine that the happy portion of the movie, the climbers reaching the summit, goes on much longer than the unhappy portion, in which climbers fail and die.
How I felt about it. I spent much of the movie marveling at how stupid the characters are. True, I had knowledge that they did not have, namely, that half of the team would die, including the two group leaders. Note that the Sherpas did not die. They knew when to head down the mountain, and everyone else should have followed them.
But those climbers, both amateur and experienced, were not actually stupid. They were merely misguided. They believed the thrill of conquering Everest would be with them throughout their lives, instead of leaving them indebted and injured, assuming they escaped becoming just another corpse abandoned on the mountain.
Guys, and gals, the suffering and expense is not worth it. Many people climb Everest every year, and the only one anyone knows is Sir Edmund Hillary, because he managed to get there first. Stay home, stay warm, and instead watch IMAX films about fools blowing their life savings to slowly freeze to death at 27,000 feet.
About who is to blame. They had bad luck with guide ropes, oxygen cans, and weather. But the real problem was that they did not keep to the plan of heading back to camp at 2 PM. Rob's desire to give everyone their moment of glory at the top led to that glory lasting only a short while before everything goes wrong.