User reviews

Hard to imagine why a group of people would assemble to produce this. I just watched it on Pay Per View. I was in the mood for a "thriller", and the most skilled artisan involved in this production was the one who made the trailer look like it referenced a passable film. I do occasionally like to watch "rubbish" films, like the random Airline disaster... The ones where someone with the fear of flying lands the airplane with one wing, no wheels and after all the crew die after all drinking coffee spiked by a scorned lover, while callous Corporate overlords cover up the shoddy maintenance schedule of the aircraft.

But... not this...

Another commenter points out all the flaws relating to mountain climbing. The science is just as daft, the technology even worse and the political scenario's take the biscuit... So the UN sanction the creation of a doomsday satellite network, all controlled by one 4 inch remote control device thats guarded by, maybe 3 guys...

I may have seen a worse movie in my life... But I cant think of one, right now.

This film is a waste of digital imagery! Imagine, the hero ventures up K2 in a K-Mart parka with a fur edged hood no less. In one scene one "climber" (I say that oh so tongue in cheek) belays another by just standing there (he is tied onto the rope though)while his buddy holds a hundred feet or so of loosely coiled rope in his hands between the "belay" and the prospective climber.

Oh man, this flick is sooooo bad, I almost wept. Oh, the aforementioned climber falls down a crevasse, is hanging there wearing his crampons, then is hauled out without them. I mean, these things are strapped to your ankles so you can't loose them. The ice axe technique and cramponning (no front pointing at all) is pathetic, and crawling up, no, along snow slopes reminded me of a drunk in the gutter finding his way home. Speaking of axe technique, when a guy fell down a slope, instead of using the appropriate technique of rolling over and gently applying the point as a brake by applying ones weight, he lies on his back flailing helplessly at the snow. If that axe had gripped, it would have ripped his arm off.

All those really great mountaineers now sadly perished, will be rolling over in their graves (if lucky enough to have one).

'Nuff said, this film should be burnt! It's a disgrace!

The picture of a climber on the DVD box is what made me rent the movie. I was expecting something no worse than Cliff Hanger or Vertical Limits (both of which were ludicrous). But I knew within the first 2 minutes that this was oh-so-much-worse... The special effects are bad, the acting is bad, the script is pathetic, and the climbing... beyond laughable. Another reviewer already commented on the "crawling along the snow", the missing crampons in the crevasse, and the poor ice axe technique of the "climbers".

I'll add to that: 1) the fact that the climbers go from D.C. to K2 base camp at about 20,000ft with no acclimatization (close to instant death...); 2) they carry big, heavy non-expedition tents to Camp 1; 3) there are tire tracks all around Camp 1 (!!!); 4) they never rope up properly, and walk too close together; 5) it's windy outside, but quiet and calm inside the tent (no wind); 6) they carry Coleman gas lanterns to Camp 1 and no one has a headlamp (what real climbers use); 7) their packs and equipment are all new, and yet, all these climbers are "the world's best" with loads of experience; 8) they're not dressed like climbers (furry hood); 9) they keep referring to the fact that it's suicide to climb K2 "in this season" (winter?), yet, it's mostly sunny and apparently not very cold on the mountain (no visible "breath").

And no one - I don't care how good they are - would ever sign up to reach 23,000ft on the north face of K2, within 72 hours of sitting in an office in Washington, D.C. Not even for large sums of money.

If you're going to write a movie about climbing, wouldn't you learn SOMETHING about the sport first?

For good climbing movies, Everest (IMAX) by David Brashears, and Touching the Void (the Joe Simpson story) --- much, much, much better, even without the fake Russians and glowing Rubik's cubes...

It starts with some guys breaking into a place and stealing a flashing lucite maguffin of the sort my brother used to build for the light show at the Fillmore East almost sixty years ago. They begin a running machine gun match into the street, where one of them blows the top off a fire hydrant, causing water go everywhere. Then they fight hand to hand. After one of them has the same arm broken twice, he lies down with the water rushing over him. "You're all washed up!" quips the other and strolls off as a cop car pulls up, with nary a "halt."

The maguffin winds up at the tippy-tippy top of K-2 of course, while an aide explains to president Michael Kopsa that it with trigger all the armed satellites and destroy the world. Fortunately, they've assembled a team of American and Russian mountain climbers to walk to the top of the world's second tallest mountain and turn it off. So they do, despite the usual experts mountaineers who keep falling down, avalanches, betrayals, and ex-lovers who wrangle over whose fault it was they broke up, with lots of martial music to be heard.

Will the world be saved? The question, I think, is that should a world that produce movies this dumb be saved? With Costas Mandylor, Nia Peeples, and a bunch of other actors whose names I am not going to mention because I'd like to think they were broke and their mothers all needed operations. However, note director Jim Wynorski and screenwriter Jonas Quastel, and if you see those names, run.