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The Mountain Between Us may be too far-fetched for some viewers to appreciate, but it's elevated by reliably engaging performances from Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. Read critic reviews
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Movie Info
Stranded on a mountain after a tragic plane crash, two strangers must work together to endure the extreme elements of the remote, snow-covered terrain. Realizing that help is not on the way, they embark on a perilous journey across hundreds of miles of wilderness, pushing each other to survive and discovering their inner strength.
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Rating: PG-13 (Brief Strong Language|A Scene of Sexuality|Injury Images|Peril)
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Genre: Adventure, Drama, Romance
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Original Language: English
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Director: Hany Abu-Assad
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Producer: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, David Ready
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Writer: Chris Weitz, J. Mills Goodloe
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Release Date (Theaters): wide
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $30.3M
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Runtime:
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Distributor: 20th Century Fox
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Production Co: Chernin Entertainment
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Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
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Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)
Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for The Mountain Between Us
Critic Reviews for The Mountain Between Us
Audience Reviews for The Mountain Between Us
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Incredibly intense and suspenseful, The Mountain Between Us is a thrilling tale of survival. After their commercial flights are cancelled Ben and Alex partner up to charter a private plane, but when it crashes in the mountains they band together and attempt to make their way back to civilization. Idris Elba and Kate Winslet both give extraordinary performances. And the writing is also pretty good; particularly in how it sets up the crash and works through Ben and Alex's efforts to get rescued and overcome various challenges. Additionally, the director does an impressive job at showing the beauty, isolation, and dangers of the mountain wilderness. A gripping drama, The Mountain Between Us is a remarkably powerful film about determination and force of will in extreme circumstances.
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An unimaginative survival/love story which bored me to death. Rooting for the dog the whole way but lost interest in the leads about 3o minutes in!
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Predictable enough, with no real surprises. This isn't the survivalist film the trailer tries to sell. However, you can take some comfort in just how predictable it is and that also seems to make it more enjoyable overall.
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At what point can you tell an onscreen pairing just isn't working? Chemistry is one of those elusive and ineffable qualities that can make or break a film, especially one that relies upon sexual tension and romantic yearning. If the actors don't feel like they want to be with one another, it's all going to fall apart. This is what I kept thinking as I watched The Mountain Between Us and was dumbstruck by the powerful lack of chemistry between its leads, each an accomplished actor in their own right. I don't thin the movie could have been saved given its script but it certainly could have been at least better. If you're going into The Mountain Between Us expecting a thrilling survival tale or a stirring romantic pairing, then you'll be sorely disappointed. Ben (Idris Elba) and Alex (Kate Winslet) are strangers who have the same problem. Their flights have been canceled and they have important places to be. He's a surgeon. She's a journalism photographer who is getting married. They share a single engine propeller plane to fly over the mountains and into the Denver airport. Unfortunately, the pilot suffers a stroke and the plane goes down, stranding Ben, Kate, and the pilot's helpful labrador in the mountains. They'll have to rely upon one another to survive in a hostile wilderness and seek rescue when nobody knows where they may be. Watching pretty people endure hardships and persevere is as old a story as Hollywood, and The Mountain Between Us fails on so many levels, but none more so than chemistry. Elba and Winslet are meant to fall in love with one another over the course of their struggles and it is that love, we are told, that was the real key to their survival. If that sounds like Nicholas Sparks dribble, you're on the right track, as the source material was very much a romance story. I'm sure the characters had to be better established and the romance felt more organic than what we get in the movie. I think the setup is an interesting place to start: two strangers who rely upon each other for survival and that co-dependence transforms into something they deem to be love. However, we don't really get much in the way of the consequences of this except for an extended coda that doesn't feel like nearly enough. Other than a spur-of-the-moment sex scene the movie doesn't dwell on this looming romantic relationship in any way other than glances of gratitude. We hardly know anything about these characters before they are in a plane crash, and from there the survival against the elements takes precedence. Winslet spends most of the movie laying down and needing to be taken care of. If this movie needs to survive on their romance then it was doomed at casting. Granted, there is nil in the way of characterization and plot development for them to work with as well. At no point do you feel any emotional connection or even any sort of sensual heat between them. They seem far more irritated and put-upon by one another, but that's supposed to melt away into something deeper and meaningful, though it never does. These are two talented actors but whoa do they not work together (other pairings were going to be Michael Fassbender and Margot Robbie, Charlie Hunnam and Rosamund Pike). Let this film be a lesson to everyone about the importance of hiring the right actors. Given the life-and-death survival, it seems shocking that the film has such low or non-existent stakes. You never once feel like these characters are in real jeopardy. They always seem to luck out, whether it's a perfectly placed flare gun to ward off a bobcat, a cabin that's none too far from their crash site, or that same dead bobcat that can provide some nourishment. There doesn't seem to be much of a struggle on screen other than walking through the snow. It's missing the visceral realism that survival stories offer audiences as entertainment. Ever since watching Wind River, stories about characters running long distances in sub-zero climates is ruined for me. I keep thinking, "Why aren't their lungs exploding now?" I was surprisingly bored through much of their survival outdoors because none of it felt that serious or memorable (this isn't Kate Winslet's personal Revenant). This is less a survival story than a sudsy romance. Apparently, how they survive is less important than their eventual acknowledgement of love. It removes all sense of danger. The inclusion of the dog is the single greatest antidote to realism. Ben and Alex have a cute pet this whole time. This makes The Mountain Between Us feel like a "movie" rather than a "story," and so we just wait and wait for precious moments that will successfully entertain, few and far between they are. Director Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now, Omar) makes fine use of the Canadian Rockies to provide breathtakingly picturesque landscapes. Even if you're relatively bored with the characters there's always the scenery to take in and enjoy. Abu-Assad does have one memorably effective sequence and that's the plane crash itself. His camera bobs and weaves inside the tiny cabin as long unbroken shot, reminiscent of the famous sequence inside the car in Children of Men. It's an effort level that isn't really matched, or at least evident, for the rest of the movie. It peaks at the crash. The human drama seems more interested in the human drama than the survival thrills, which is fine, but if that was the case then we should have gotten better characters and the room for them to develop so that whatever romantic connections form feel and believable and desirable. I have a solution to all of these issues except the chemistry one. This movie needed a radical rehaul at the structural level to be a better-developed and more interesting story. The movie needed to be told primarily AFTER Ben and Kate are rescued (spoilers, I guess, but I doubt many thought this was going to end in Greek tragedy). It's during this fifteen-minute coda where the movie becomes its most interesting, and that's because our characters have to readjust to the outside world but are forever changed. Starting from that point allows the characters to open up so much more and we see a different array of challenges, ones that are more relatable but also with an undetermined outcome. We know these actors are going to live by the film's end without question. We don't know if they'll still be psychologically stable or whole though re-acclimating to their lives. This needed to be more like the second half of Room. This approach would give substantially more for these great actors to dig into. You could also use flashbacks to fill in notable experiences during their time stranded in the mountains. This would provide contrasts but it would also smartly allow us to skip all the dull stuff we know is just filler. This would also allow more genuine surprises and chances for narrative irony. At one point Alex develops the film roll she took during her time in the mountains, and at this point we already know she snapped a picture while Ben was asleep post-coitus. What if seeing these pictures was our first clue that some romantic intimacy happened? These two people bonded over the course of a couple weeks and no two other people may fully understand what they've gone through. Explore that with their difficulty to reconnect to the "outside world" and how much they have come to rely on one another after their rescue. That way it's a character-piece about relationships with worthy material. The Mountain Between Us is a mediocre romantic drama hindered by terrible chemistry, half-formed characterization, and a poorly developed story. When the life-and-death survival after a plane crash in the mountain feels lacking in stakes and peril, then you have a problem. When the romantic union between its mega-watt stars feels perfunctory, you have an additional problem, especially when it seems to be the point of the exercise. The Mountain Between Us plays, as one other astute critic wrote, as "Idris Elba fan fiction," with the injured lead being tended to by the handsome and capable protector who can't help but fall in love with this woman. It's not an offensively bad movie but a fatally flawed disappointment that had potential given its premise. There needed to be a dramatic restructuring of the screenplay to emphasize their recovery, which would have better served the talents of these actors. Still, there are worse people to be stranded with. Nate's Grade: C
nathan z Super Reviewer
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