Alex is unconscious and has a severely broken leg. He finds that Walter is dead, but the dog survived. Ben goes over to help, but Walter loses motor function and the plane goes crashing down into the mountains.īen wakes up at night. As Walter is contacting someone over the radio, he begins to suffer a stroke.

Alex then notices the storm clouds appearing overhead. On the flight, Alex tells Ben that she's a photographer who was in the area photographing neo-nazis. Walter brings his dog along, and the dog doesn't immediately take too kindly to Ben. The two walk over to meet Walter (Beau Bridges), a man owning a charter plane that can get them to their destination. Alex approaches Ben and offers a solution to their problem. At the same time, Ben Bass (Idris Elba) is attempting to fly in order to perform heart surgery on a 10-year-old boy, but his flight has also been cancelled. Alex Martin (Kate Winslet) is trying to fly to Denver for her wedding, only to be told that her flight has been cancelled due to an impending storm. The Mountain Between Us builds towards a tame romance that left me wondering what kind of film it might have been if the studio had the courage to make a straight romantic comedy starring Winslet and Elba, who are above this parodic material.The film starts at an airport. A broken leg, hypothermia, a mountain cougar and a bear trap are no match for Ben, gifted with the face of a Hollywood hero and the survival skills of Bear Grylls, who solves every problem with serial killer-like preparation. Despite the couple’s supposed life or death scenario, the stakes feel low, with writers J Mills Goodloe and Chris Weitz throwing every snow-related hazard possible at the unlikely pair. But then disaster movie warps into schmaltzy romance, an odd misfire that ends up being inadvertently hilarious (especially the wacky, wish fulfilment ending). Inevitably, the plane crashes, leaving them freezing and stranded, with only the pilot’s golden retriever to keep them company. They pile into the plane, Alex practically hanging out of the window trying to snap pictures while Ben plays Candy Crush, dressed in a cashmere sweater and inappropriately suave camel coat. The pair buddy up and persuade a charter pilot to fly them across a mountain range, despite an impending storm. I dris Elba, Kate Winslet and a giant, snowy mountain: what’s not to love? Free-spirited photojournalist Alex (Winslet) has been “shooting neo-Nazis for the Guardian”, and is getting married in the morning, straitlaced brain surgeon Ben (Elba) has to operate on a dying 10-year-old the next day, they’re stuck in Salt Lake City airport and all flights have been grounded.

The mountain between us book review