Scream of Stone

This movie made a big impression on me, and I'm not even into mountain climbing. Seeing it on the big screen probably helped. Germans and their mountain films...

64.500

The story dragged and plodded, never really doing much interesting. I'm struggling to think of any memorable scenes outside of the mountain climbing scenes, which were few. But those scenes were pretty exquisite. The last 20 minutes had some gut wrenching visuals, captured with Herzog's unflinching camera. And I loved the little twist at the end. This movie isn't high on my list of Herzog dramas. In fact it's pretty low. But still I consider it worth watching for the last 20 minutes alone.

Brad Dourif steals the show whenever he's on screen and Donald Sutherland is watchable the rest of the time. All the stuff about the climbers is bunk.

This has three good things going for it: a brief cameo by Herzog himself in the beginning, a pretty good job by Sutherland in a minor role (he's just always fun to watch), and the last 20 minutes of breathtaking, suspenseful mountain climbing. Everything else is just blah. Blah performances of blah characters with blah dialogue in a blah setup for the ending. It's not even worth describing in detail... it's not horrible, it's just so pedestrian and pointless, there's no love or mystery to it.

What is this? I don't think that alpinist was so popular then or ever. But plus is that director done something with drama in this movie, and that is only positive with Sutherland in the movie.