MOVIES: THE GORGE

Miles Teller cranks a furry sloper with a taped finger.

Love it when movies have a bit of climbing in them, or zip lines or vertical shit, and The Gorge definitely has some of that. The movie was good, though not the climbing, which was minimal and suspect. Great that there was climbing etc in it, though. If you want to go and see it before we spoil it for you, go do that. If you don’t care about ruining the surprises, read on.

The first half of the movie is a fun, unusual romance between snipers. Killing people wrecks your sleep, who knew? Having a parent to confide in is helpful, but cancer is bad, and Levi might have been born from an egg on a mountain top. Drasa is adorable. They both are. The climbing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, like in Levi’s approach to the gorge, he’s hiking/free soloing a lovely cliff, but I’m not sure where he’s going with that, and they don’t show it, probably for obvious reasons being that it’s not a movie about climbing and he likely would have died. Could be wrong… maybe it’s an easy ascent. Maybe it’s CGI.

The Mash jeep hauling itself up a broken zip line. One of the best scenes.

The setting was the Rauma River in the Romsdalen Valley, Norway. Anyone been there, climbed there? Tell us about it.

Other fun scenes are the zip line and the ascension from the gorge in the jeep from Mash. The up-in-the-air-on-the-truck fight scene has great views, though I think the truck is too stable and should move more as they fight. The vertical elements make the film fun, though, and the character dynamics are great.

The dialogue is mixed; sometimes great, sometimes really disappointing. Drasa seems a bit ripped of in terms of phrases. Second half is more but less exciting. It’s not perfect, but I’m putting it up there as re-watchable. I'm already checking out more of director, Scott Derrickson's, films.

Where is he going with this? What grade is it?