Taglines: What if your life depended on a stranger?
After the cancellation of their flights out of Boise Airport due to stormy weather, neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Bass (Idris Elba) and photojournalist Alex Martin (Kate Winslet) contact Walter (Beau Bridges), a local private pilot to get to Alex’s wedding (scheduled for the following day) and Ben’s emergency surgery appointment in Baltimore, Maryland. They board an uncharted flight with Walter’s dog. Shortly after takeoff, Walter suffers a stroke, causing the plane to crash on a mountaintop. Ben, Alex and the dog survive the incident with various injuries, but Walter is killed.
Ben buries Walter and tends to Alex’s wounds, realizing they must find civilization for any hope of survival. Alex asks Ben to leave her behind as he has a better chance of surviving, but Ben refuses. Instead, he climbs a peak to see if there are any structures nearby. On his descent, he nearly falls off a cliff face. Meanwhile, a cougar approaches the plane wreckage, attacking and injuring the dog. The cougar then approaches Alex within the plane wreckage, but she wounds it with a flare. Ben returns to find a blood trail and rushes to the plane. He provides medical attention to the dog and later retrieves the body of the cougar and barbecues it for food.
Stranded for days with dwindling sustenance, Ben and Alex find strength in each other. Alex becomes skeptical that help will come, though Ben continues to insist they press on. After a heated argument, they both sleep, with Alex resolving that she will leave. At first light, she proceeds to leave the wreckage and start a descent down the mountain. Ben wakes and gives chase, eventually catching up with Alex, and they make up over past grievances. While making shelter in a cave, Alex uses her camera to locate a man-made structure and spots a reflective material flashing at her.
They agree to make it down to this structure. As they continue their walk, they become separated from the dog. Ben goes after him and finds an abandoned cabin. As he looks through it, Alex feels the ground beneath her cracking. She realizes she is standing over thin ice, and she falls through into the ice cold water. Ben hears the cracking and sees Alex fall down. He runs over and pulls her out, but she is unconscious and almost blue. Ben brings her to the cabin and starts a fire to warm her up. He takes a risk of administrating her an injection he crafted out of materials in the cabin in a resourceful way. A couple of days later, Alex eventually wakes up to the sound Ben makes with the piano in the cabin.
The first time Ben leaves Alex alone in the cabin, she goes through his personal things and again listens to a voicemail recording from his wife. Ben catches Alex in the act. She says she didn’t mean to be nosy, but she just wants to know something about him, especially since he has disclosed so little about himself and he never talks about his wife. He finally tells her his wife died two years ago from a brain tumour.
The Mountain Between Us is a 2017 American romance survival drama film, directed by Hany Abu-Assad and written by Chris Weitz and J. Mills Goodloe, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Charles Martin. It stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet as a surgeon and a journalist, respectively, who survive a plane crash, with a dog, and are stranded in High Uintas Wilderness with injuries and harsh weather conditions. The film premiered on September 9, 2017, at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 6, 2017, by 20th Century Fox.
The Mountain Between Us (2017)
Directed by: Hany Abu-Assad
Starring: Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Beau Bridges, Dermot Mulroney, Linda Sorensen, Marci T. House, Lee Majdoub, Bethany Brown, Orval Roberts, Andres Joseph, Dania Nassar, Nancy Sivak
Screenplay by: Chris Weitz, J. Mills Goodloe
Production Design by: Patrice Vermette
Cinematography by: Mandy Walker
Film Editing by: Lee Percy
Costume Design by: Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
Set Decoration by: Shannon Gottlieb
Art Direction by: Cheryl Marion, James Steuart
Music by: Ramin Djawadi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a scene of sexuality, peril, injury images, and brief strong language.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: October 6, 2017
