The Himalayas (2015)

Director: Seok-hoon Lee

Starring: Jung-min Hwang, Sung-ha Jo, Woo Jung

Based on true events, renowned mountaineer UM Hong-gil sets out on a mission to Everest to retrieve his late junior climber’s body and faces the greatest challenge of his life.

Interesting to see two films released in the same year with a similar theme and very much the same plot. First, ‘Everest’, and then ‘The Himalayas’.

I rather enjoyed the comical introduction to the characters. It gave me a chance to get to know them and care about them, especially keeping in mind the fate that awaited them. The film features some spectacular scenery and great photography, but unfortunately that’s as much as I enjoyed about this film. The film is very slow paced, becoming boring and seemingly moving in circles going nowhere slowly. It was pretty much a case of deja vu, deja vu. The characters reasoned illogical and it was hard to believe the actual people acted this way. Then again, the beginning of the film mentions some characters and events were created for dramatization. Well, I suppose that explains it.

The film eventually becomes a film about retrieving bodies instead of being about a rescue mission. Pardon me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t make sense to risk lives to retrieve bodies…

The film won awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

In Korean.