To fully enjoy the rugged outdoors adventure The Mountain, one must accept the notion that 55-year-old Spencer Tracy and 25-year-old Robert Wagner are brothers. Tracy plays veteran mountain guide Zachary Wheeler, who is coaxed out of retirement when a passenger plane crashes on high mountain. He decides it isn't worth risking his life to recover the bodies of the passengers, but hot-headed younger brother Chris (Robert Wagner), hoping to claim the victims' valuables, talks Zachary into accompanying him to the mountaintop. After their treacherous upward journey, the brothers discover that one of the passengers, a Hindu girl (Anna Kashfi), is still alive. Zachary wants to bring her back to safety, but the greedy Chris would rather abandon her and make off with the valuables. It is, inevitable, then, that not everyone involved is going to get off the mountain alive. A worthwhile character study enhanced by superb location photography, The Mountain is compromised by its overreliance on phony-looking studio "exteriors". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
lost interest.
Franz Planer's stunning cinematography and
Edward Dmytryk's intense direction make the mountain climbing section of The Mountain engrossing and thrilling. True, its effectiveness does get dampened a bit by the fact that the mismatch between the location shooting and the studio sets are so blatant, but this doesn't damage the section seriously. If the entire film had been this exciting,
Mountain would be a great film, rather than one that, on the whole, comes out just about average. The problem is that the story that is built around the mountain climbing is simply lousy. Even if one accepts the ludicrous notion of
Spencer Tracy and
Robert Wagner as brothers, one still has to contend with the boredom that comes from Tracy being essentially a saint and Wagner being essentially a devil. It's all black-and-white with these two, and that lack of nuance and detail is very damaging. The fact that Tracy is on board helps tremendously, of course; even when playing a one-note character, Tracy finds a way to make him interesting. Wagner does the best that he can, but he's not up to the Herculean task as Tracy is. Dmytryk does what he can, trying to keep the story moving before, after and in between the shots ascending and descending the mountain, and his skill helps. But ultimately he's left with a film that is absolutely vibrant with life at its best but pretty dull otherwise. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide