6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain

  "I only get to live life forward. It never makes any sense until we're looking back".

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain is the second stranded on a mountain film we’ve been given in the last few weeks, and although this one is based on a true story it doesn’t necessarily mean it is better than The Mountain Between us. It is based on the real events of Eric LeMarque who picked the worst time to go snowboarding in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and ends up being lost for eight days whilst facing hypothermia, frostbite and wolves.

6 Below is more like ‘the miracle to stay awake’ as we watch Eric LeMarque (Josh Hartnett) shout, fend off two wolves by shouting at them and shivering on repeat in a dull and bland mountain survival based on true events.

Now I’ve always been a fan of Josh Hartnett; Lucky Number Slevin, Sin City and Black Hawk Down are all fantastic films and he is a more than capable actor; however he wasn’t given a lot to work with here and is let down by the writers. The bulk of the film is bursting with tedious, repetitious shots of Eric being lost or shivering, and the only saving grace is the vast, immersive sound design with its whistling winds and howling wolves which capture the grand scale of the mountain that Eric is stranded on.

Throughout the film we learn possibly too much than we need to about Eric’s demanding and drinking hockey coach dad, his own pro hockey career demise and the subsequent descent into drug abuse through incredibly overacted and cringe worthy flashbacks. These flashbacks are unconvincing and take away from the action (Can we really call it action?) and their only purpose is to serve as the character development and provide us with a reason to root for him. His drug problem is completely glazed over and the demons he’s battling aren’t presented as serious. Seeing as this is a pretty grim true story (LeMarque lost both his legs to frostbite in real life) the film fails to create any real drama or sense of medical emergency due to its PG13 rating which whitewashes any blood or gore (or any actual drug abuse). The ugliest scene we get to witness is LeMarque ripping off his own frozen flesh and subsequently eating it. Yummy.

Perhaps had the writers pushed the drama immensely and given us some tension, 6 Below may have developed into a tragedy turned-inspirational story, but instead we are presented with an unconvincing struggle which had the potential to be on par with 127 Hours, but fell short by about 120 hours.