Blizzard of blahs
FIRST rule of staying alive on a remote, icy mountain: Be hot.
Oh, I don’t mean your internal body temperature — that comes later. Step one is that you must be physically alluring. Gorgeous, really. Average Janes and Joes, prepare to meet your doom.
Kate Winslet and Idris Elba prove this essential dictum in “The Mountain Between Us,” a wilderness survival romance that makes subzero weather, blizzards and broken limbs seem as taxing as a train delay.
How do these A-listers find themselves stranded in the Rockies? In a rush to get home to New York for her wedding, Winslet’s character charters a private flight from Denver, and takes along Elba, another grounded traveler. Their pilot has a stroke midair — dang! — and the plane goes down, along with the pilot’s pup, an adorable golden retriever. (Just in case pet lovers have been triggered, this film includes no devastating doggy moments.)
Winslet is a photojournalist who was working out West “shooting skinheads,” and Elba is a neurosurgeon who relies on logic. Naturally, she advo- cates for the heart, which he calls just “a muscle,” and Elba goes gung-ho for the brain. The audience, meanwhile, wishes the film genuinely had either.
The pair and their canine compatriot eventually discover an abandoned cabin — phew! — and the sort of activities that usually go down in a hidden love nest go down, much to the audience’s delight. Hint: “Draw me like one of your French girls.”
One positive: The last time we saw Winslet this chilly, she was clinging onto a floating door in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, whispering, “Don’t let go, Jack.” “Mountain” is a nice “Titanic” throwback.
Wow, I actually miss James Cameron’s dialogue.