The Mountain Between Us, based on the book by Charles Martin 7 out of 10

The Mountain Between Us, based on the book by Charles Martin
7 out of 10


This is interesting, up to a point, but not overwhelming.
Academy Award Kate Winslet is Alex Martin in this film, a photographer that dares to travel and work on the frontline and is about to get married.
In fact, she in a hurry and very upset to find she has no seat on a plane and could therefore miss her own...wedding!

This is when he hears a doctor who is also affected by the fact that he cannot board a plane, Ben Bass aka the usually exceptional Idris Elba, who is alas less convincing in a motion picture where his partner is not performing at her best either...my take on this film anyway.
Alex Martin has the splendid idea to rent instead of a car, a small plane, sharing the cost with the good doctor.

Beau Bridges is Walter, the man who has an available small airplane, the dog that goes with it, a Retriever or Labrador, I am not sure which.
They get up in the sky, where the view is formidable, they can see the snowy mountains, over which they fly and the storm that is not the danger they're facing.

For it is Walter that provides the potential catastrophe when he is having a heart attack, resulting in loss of control of the plane, a crash that kills the pilot and injures seriously the woman and only slightly the doctor.
The audience can think of the more recent Mission Impossible and the implausible accident and the resulting fight between the good Ethan Hunt and his villainous opponent.

But the better film is the one that describes the real life adventure of the soccer team that crashed in the Andes, where some of them have died, others survived by eating human flesh and demonstrating incredible resilience and courage.
The two people stranded on top of a mountain covered in snow try the usual tactics, firing a signaling rocket when another airplane flies by,but the outcome is null.

Alex Martin cannot move since one of her legs is probably broken, but the doctor tries to find a way out, food, some help and falls near a precipice, coming close to death once more.
In the meantime, while he is gone, the heroine is in the wreckage, with the Walter's dog - he would have no name up to the end.

A mountain lion is looking for food and the silly dog attracts its attention with his mad barking that would not stop in spite of the repeated requests made by the scared woman.
Even worse, the Retriever jumps out to fight the wild large cat with no success and the predator enters the shallow refuge of the victim, who takes out the signaling pistol and kills the poor puma with it.

Alex insists that they must get going, even when the doctor, who knows better about her medical condition obviously, opposes the idea.
The woman takes an extreme step, walks out at dawn, before the man woke up, taking the dog with her and leaving a note to explain she had to go.

Indeed, if they stay in the wreckage, they would have to submit to the rule of threes:

Three minutes without air
Three days without water
Three weeks without food

Would kill you.
However, the rule applies even if they walk, but there is a chance at least.

This is another similarity with the case of the football team, wherein the bravest of them all had the courage to say that he would walk to bring in help, as the only way out.
Alex and Ben have eaten the mountain lion, so they are in a better shape, even if she still has trouble walking.

They would experience as much as you can expect from this kind of film.
What seems rather incredible is that they somehow find the energy at one point to have sex, in spite of all that regime of freezing cold, very few calories and exhausting traveling through the snow and difficult terrain.

One of them is even submerged in a lake, when the ice on top of it cracks.
The last chapter seems too long for the good of the film and not particularly well acted, perhaps because the material was not brilliant and the talented stars did not feel much of an incentive to engage with it.