Rocky ‘Mountain’
Survivalist romance starring Winslet, Elba leaves us feeling cold
Abad film and a worse title, “The Mountain Between Us” is a survivalist romance set in the High Uintas Wilderness in Utah (yeah, I hadn't heard of it before either). Idris Elba and Kate Winslet play Ben Bass and Alex Martin, a surgeon and photojournalist, respectively, who team up to charter a small plane piloted by the aeronautic equivalent of an old salt (Beau Bridges) and his dog to fly them out of Idaho in a big storm. Over the mountain ranges of Utah, the prop plane is hit by the storm (“The storm moved”) and, in one of the scariest crashes I have ever seen, comes down on a ridge.
Miraculously, Ben and Alex survive, although she has a serious leg injury. It's nice to have a surgeon aboard. Ben (“the heart is just a muscle”) was headed East to perform major surgery on a sick child. Alex was on her way to her wedding(!) in Denver. They both miss their engagements and are thrown together on a remote mountaintop where no rescue party is expected because the Vietnam veteran pilot, who does not survive the crash, did not file flight plans at the airport. Of course, I would have gone all “Alive” on his butt (literally) and turned the old coot into Swedish meatballs.
Ben figures out a way to make a small fire in the smashed fuselage of the plane without setting fire to whatever fuel might be around. But Alex has a close encounter with a starving cougar.
Ben likes to play “Candy Crush.” Alex covers neo-Nazi rallies for The Guardian. Soon, they're burning Alex's photos for fuel and arguing about Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate.” Alex also snoops, listening to messages from Ben's (estranged? departed?) wife he has stored on a digital recorder.
After the attack, passage of time and exhaustion of supplies, the two decide, in spite of Alex's injury, to try to walk down the mountain to find help or better shelter below the tree line. At first they find themselves surrounded by a torrent of water created by melting ice. In one scene, Alex tells Ben the not very edifying tale of how she took a picture of a dying young woman guerrilla and feels guilty about it.
Alex and Ben find shelter in the wilderness and shack up, to coin a phrase, and find relief from the relentless cold. Elba and Winslet are wonderful actors and beautiful people, so, of course, you're sitting there waiting for them to realize that, as the Borg used to say, “resistance is futile,” and get it on.
“The Mountain Between Us” is based on a novel by the American author Charles Martin published in 2011. Academy Award nominated director Hany Abu-Assad, an Arab filmmaker born in Nazareth, previously co-wrote his films “The Idol” (2015) and “Paradise Now” (2005). “The Mountain Between Us” was adapted to the screen by J. Mills Goodloe (“The Age of Adaline”) and Chris Weitz (“Rogue One”).
Watching the ending of “The Mountain Between Us,” which is set in London, I got the distinct feeling the film had been re-shot after test screenings and the producers decided to go with the ending they thought audiences would like most. Memo to the producers: I did not buy it.
(“The Mountain Between Us” contains a violent crash and a sexually suggestive scene.)