Survival against the elements is big this month. Daniel Radcliffe is lost in a jungle in Jungle, Josh Hartnett is battling sub-zero temperatures in 6 Below, and Kate Winslet and Idris Elba have several mountains, a forest, and a frozen lake between them, and a civilisation in The Mountain Between Us.
It’s this two-hander that’s the strongest of the three (check the star ratings), possibly because it’s the only one not hamstrung by having to stay faithful to a true story. Any moment it feels as though the energy’s dwindling — boom! Kate Winslet can grab a flare gun to shoot a hostile cougar in the face.
A likeable, witty, romantic adventure film.
Winslet is Alex Martin, a photojournalist trying to get back to New York from Salt Lake City for her wedding the next day. When an incoming storm grounds all flights out of the airport she recruits similarly stranded passenger Ben Bass (Elba), who she overhears telling the airline staff he urgently needs to get back to perform a surgery, to hire a small private plane to take them home. But the plane crashes, the pilot dies and the two of them (plus the pilot’s dog) are stranded on a snowy mountain in Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness. What follows is a tale of survival and, eventually — between the two human survivors, at least — romance.
That this doubles as a love story means that the film doesn’t dwell on survival techniques or the grimness of their situation. And the pair rarely focus on their likely deaths. The script, co-written by Chris Weitz (co-writer of About A Boy) and J. Mills Goodloe, is instead mostly content to have them bicker, bond or flirt as the situation dictates. That this works at all is down to the two actors. Elba has been underutilised as a romantic lead but, with his easy charm and charisma (and, let’s not kid ourselves, incredible looks), he’s ideal for the role. And it’s refreshing to see him paired with an actress (within a couple of years of) his own age, rather than — as is far more common — 20 years his junior.
But there is still peril, and not just from that cougar. Winslet appears to be channelling Rose from Titanic — Alex’s every instinct seemingly leading the pair into danger, whether it’s wanting to climb down an unscalable cliff face or sending Ben to find where the dog’s run off to. It’s a good job Ben is medically trained, because she’d be dead several times over without him. And every problem is quickly solved, whether it’s a lack of food, a hunt for shelter or Alex being unable to walk — Ben simply drags her behind him across the snow as though she’s a sled. It’s an engaging journey, but not unpredictable — moments of adversity are followed by moments of triumph until their journey comes to an end.
And, despite Alex having a fiancé she was a day away from marrying (who’s presumably frantic with worry for her — although we never see the outside world), you’ll be rooting for them to get together. Whether that’s a good idea or not (Sandra Bullock’s warning in Speed that “relationships based on intense experiences never work” suggests not) becomes moot. There’s a grittier version of this story, with a deeper examination of the morals involved, but that’s not what director Hany Abu-Assad wanted to make. This
is a likeable, witty, romantic adventure film and on those virtues, it succeeds.
