Director: Daniel Lee
Notable Cast: Wu Jing, Zhang Ziyi, Zhang Yi, Jing Boran,
Hu Ge, Wang Jingchun, Chen Long, He Lin, Choenyi Tsering, Jackie Chan
China’s attempts to be the next Hollywood are only getting
larger. Whether it’s big-time disaster films, comedies, or science fiction (and
to some extent all three at once in the blockbuster The Wandering Earth) the
industry is hellbent on taking inspiration and attempting to out-Hollywood
Hollywood at its own game. The Climbers is a product of this mindset.
This film exists to a) be a huge action-packed and dramatic blockbuster to draw
in audiences with its stars and big-name talent and b) as continued jingoistic
propaganda for China. For all of the hype around Wu Jing teaming up with
director Daniel Lee to tell the story of the Chinese expedition in 1975 to
crest Mt. Everest, it’s almost fitting that the film ends up as a gigantic
mess. It tries incredibly hard to be everything a major blockbuster film needs
to be as a huge four-quadrant success and, unfortunately, lacks the balance of
pacing and tonality to fit it all in there. There are a handful of things to
respect in how The Climbers approaches its material, but for everything
it does right, it makes a half dozen choices that don’t work in obscenely
baffling ways.