The Mountain Between Us movie review (2017)

What really comes between Winslet’s globetrotting photojournalist Alex and Elba’s brain surgeon Ben as fate and bad weather bring them together isn’t so much geographical but script-related. Based on a novel by Charles Martin, the screenplay is a collaboration between Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” the live-action “Cinderella”) and J. Mills Goodloe (“The Age of Adaline,” “Everything, Everything”). I’ll vouch for Weitz’s skills, but in the case of Goodloe, anyone who has adapted a Nicholas Sparks’ novel that isn’t “The Notebook” is suspect. And having seen “The Best of Me,” I rest my case. 

Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, the maker of two politically charged Oscar-nominated foreign films (“Paradise Now” and “Omar,” the last featuring a love story) certainly has cred. But he fails to achieve producer Peter Chernin’s self-proclaimed vision of a romantic epic in the tradition of “Dr. Zhivago” and “Out of Africa.” Compared to those classics, “Mountain” is more of a molehill.

Right out of the gate, I had an uneasy feeling about “The Mountain Between Us” as all flights are canceled at an Idaho airport because of an incoming blizzard. Alex, desperate to head back to New York in time for her wedding, overhears Ben complaining that he has to operate on a young boy the next morning. She proposes they share a small plane for hire. Their pilot is Beau Bridges, who emits good ol’ boy vibes as he brings his soulful-eyed golden Labrador on-board. That his Walter doesn’t bother to file a flight plan is an all-too-convenient warning sign.

Not long after takeoff, while flying over remote treacherous terrain packed with white stuff, Walter begins to slur his speech and Ben recognizes he is having a stroke. Thank goodness, I have never witnessed anyone having such an attack. But Bridges, perhaps making up for the brevity of his part, seems to have taken his cues from Ian Holm’s Ash, the malfunctioning android in “Alien.” The crash itself isn’t all that terrifying in these days of “Flight” and “Sully.” But Walter is a goner, the dog survives and he is in better shape than Alex, who has a huge gash on her leg. Ben—oh, thank goodness, there just happens to be a doctor in the house—fixes her up as best he can before tending to his own cuts and bruises.

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