Wings over Everest

冰峰暴

China/Japan, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D (China only), 109 mins.

Director: Yu Fei 余非.

Rating: 6/10.

Pulpy action-drama trips along at a smart pace but doesn’t know when to quit.

STORY

Nepal, 2019. Mountain-rescue team Wings, owned by veteran climber Jiang Yuesheng (Yakusho Koji), saves a man (Chen Hailiang) trapped on the southern side of Everest near the summit, thanks to the bravery of 30-something temporary member Xiaodaizi, “Little Bag” (Zhang Jingchu). When she hears that the man’s daughter (Lu Jingqi) is trapped below, Xiaodaizi ignores Jiang Yuesheng’s orders and goes to rescue the young woman, despite worsening weather. Jiang Yuesheng himself has to save Xiaodaizi as an avalanche hurtles down. Afterwards he sacks her from the team. Three days later, at Wings’ bar in Kathmandu, the team is approached by two wealthy clients, Victor Hawk (Victor Webster) and his younger brother Marcus (Graham Shiels), who are introduced by Wings’ longtime radio operator Suya (Babak Haleky). Representing Indian military intelligence, they want to recover a stolen file from a plane that crashed three days earlier on the southern side of Everest, in the so-called Death Zone just below the summit. As Wings is heavily in debt, Jiang Yuesheng can’t refuse their offer of US$500,000; Victor Hawk also suggests Xiaodaizi as a replacement for injured team member Tashi (Pubu Ciren). Jiang Yuesheng catches her just as she’s leaving Nepal and re-hires her, even though he knows she’s still looking for the body of her boyfriend, Xia Wen (Zhang Yi), whom she had to leave on the mountain five years ago. Early next day Victor and Marcus Hawk leave with the Wings team of Jiang Yuesheng, Xiaodaizi, James (Noah Danby) and cocky young helicopter pilot Han Minsheng (Lin Bohong). They have 55 hours to retrieve the sensitive document, whose contents could impact the Himalaya Alliance Peace Summit to reduce tension in the region. Han Minsheng drops everyone off above Base Camp at 5,700 metres; that evening the team reaches Camp III at 7,100 metres. But that night Jiang Yuesheng and then Xiaodaizi receive phone calls from Tashi that change everything.

REVIEW

The second of two Mainland mountaineering movies released in 2019, action-drama Wings over Everest 冰峰暴 is in many ways superior to The Climbers 攀登者, especially in character development, but is let down by a script that doesn’t know when to quit as well as a dodgy piece of lead casting. The China/Japan co-production was actually shot a year before Climbers and certified in early 2019, when the latter hadn’t even wrapped; however, it was only released after the much more patriotic, Shanghai Film Studio-backed production, starring Mainland action hero Wu Jing 吴京 and actress Zhang Ziyi 章子怡, had finished its eight-week run (begun in the prime October holiday slot). At the end of the day it’s no better or worse than the workmanlike Climbers, with first-time writer-director Yu Fei 余非 (a scifi writer and extreme adventurer, plus a former China v.p. of French videogamer Gameloft) putting together a solid pulp product under the experienced eye of veteran Hong Kong producer Zhang Jiazhen 张家振 [Terence Chang]. However, Everest fatigue – combined, maybe, with the less starry lineup – took a heavy toll with audiences, resulting in a puny RMB13 million box office compared with Climbers‘ RMB1.1 billion.

Where Climbers was a fictionalised re-telling of the first two Chinese ascents of Everest (in 1960 and 1975), Wings is basically pure fiction – a good old action-drama in which a private mountain-rescue team is hired by some shady individuals to retrieve sensitive stolen documents from a plane that crashed just below the summit, in the so-called Death Zone where 120 climbers’ bodies still lie. The fact that said documents could imperil world peace – or at least peace between the (unnamed) countries attending a Himalaya Alliance summit in less than three days’ time – is the main dramatic driver, as a Chinese veteran (Japan’s Yakusho Koji 役所広司, in his first Chinese film) leads a team up the mountain’s south (i.e. Nepalese) side. Soon they’re falling off ledges and doing their best to kill each other with everything ranging from ice picks to machine guns at 7,000 metres.

Despite a mild (and wholly unbelievable) twist in one of the team’s loyalties, Wings is a standard action adventure that trips along at a smart pace with plenty of plot reversals and dialogue left to a minimum. A pre-main title rescue sequence sets up the main characters – the grizzled leader, cocky young pilot (Taiwan actor-singer Lin Bohong 林柏宏), and especially a tomboy volunteer (Mainland actress Zhang Jingchu 张静初) – leaving the main story plenty of room to develop their individual quirks: the leader lost his daughter to the mountain, the tomboy still wants to find her boyfriend’s body from an accident five years ago, and some other team members also have double agendas. Unfortunately, after a finale that ends the main plot with jaw-dropping bravado, the film carries on for another 10 minutes as it ties up some loose ends and becomes very mystical-magical in the process, generating no real emotion.

Character development is hardly trenchant but still has more depth and gusto than that of Climbers, largely due to Zhang’s performance. An actress who peaked early in her film career with titles like The Road 芳香之旅 (2006), Zhang, 39, has since had difficulty finding good leading roles, her last being in the under-rated comedy-drama The Old Cinderella 脱轨时代 (2014), on which she also took a producing credit; on Wings she does the same, and manages to make the potentially token role of a gutsy girl in a world of men into her own, even in potentially soppy scenes involving her late boyfriend and her motivation. Making an equally good fist of the action scenes, Zhang more than earns her top billing, throwing into the shade the second-billed Yakusho, 64, who’s unconvincing as a Chinese, projects little authority, and also looks way too old to be climbing Everest. With the western cast (made up of Canadian actors) no more than cut-outs, and saddled with some squirmingly awful dialogue, it’s left to 31-year-old Lin (the young sidekick in The Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang 神探蒲松龄, 2019) to fill in the space between as a cheeky-chappy helicopter pilot.

The film was shot in China, Canada (British Columbia) and Nepal during Jan-Apr 2018, with some especially striking mountain footage by Canadian d.p. Danny Nowak and good matching of studio material by Hong Kong d.p. Li Yaohui 黎耀辉 [Lai Yiu-fai] and the VFX team. Editing by Canadian-born, Hong Kong-based David Richardson (a Milkyway Image regular) and the US’ Jordan Dieselberg (who worked with Richardson on Operation Mekong 湄公河行动, 2016) is trim. The score by Japan’s Kawai Kenji 川井憲次 is way above his average, giving some shape to the antics and fast-changing moods, and not just providing awesome mountain music.

For the record, the film’s English title is the same as that of the Oscar-winning 1934 UK documentary short about a flight over the southern peak. The Chinese one (literally, “Ice Peak Storm”) sounds identical in Mandarin to the one for US drama The Ice Storm (1997).

CREDITS

Presented by Spring Era (Pingtan) (CN), Beijing Mirage (CN), Beijing Scitech Films (CN), VAP (JP), Tianjin Qitai Culture & Media (CN). Produced by Beijing Mirage (CN).

Script: Yu Fei. Script assistance: Qi Shibo, Yu Jiang, Zeng Linyan. Photography: Li Yaohui [Lai Yiu-fai] (main unit), Danny Nowak (Canada unit). Editing: David Richardson, Jordan Dieselberg. Music: Kawai Kenji. Art direction: Bak Il-hyeon, Qi Shibo. Costumes: Huo Feng. Sound: Liu Tao, Zhai Shuo. Action: Mu Ning, Wang Ke. Special effects: Guo Shizhen. Visual effects: Ji Ruirui, Yu Jiang, Zhou Yanchun (Illumina Technology). Executive direction: Fang Tingting.

Cast: Zhang Jingchu (Xiaodaizi), Yakusho Koji (Jiang Yuesheng), Lin Bohong (Han Minsheng), Victor Webster (Victor Hawk), Noah Danby (James), Graham Shiels (Marcus Hawk), Babak Haleky (Suya), Pubu Ciren (Tashi), Yang Yi (Xia Wen), Chen Hailiang (rescued father), Lu Jingqi (rescued daughter), Okihara Issei (barman), Zhang Ya’nan, Zhang Wanqing, Yang Jiebai, Sun Yichen, Peng Lin, Julia (Han Minsheng’s fans in bar).

Premiere: Tokyo Film Festival (Special Screenings), 3 Nov 2019.

Release: China, 29 Nov 2019; Japan, 15 Nov 2019.