K2

A climb up to base camp, breathtaking bivouacking under an overhang, the beauty of the Karakoram Mountains and the bombastic music of Hans Zimmer. Despite its clichéd story and shaky physical credibility, K2 remains the best of the 1990s mountain adventures alongside Cliffhanger. (11/04/2002)

As long as the climbers are just walking on the plateaus of Tibet, I have no major reservations. But when the going gets tough and the actors feign physical effort at deadly heights, they and the locations are very unconvincing. But it's still a hundred times better than, for example, Vertical Limit's parody of mountaineering. (11/05/2003)

Decent, sometimes immersive, but most of the time only poorly masking the affectation and unconvincingness of key acting performances. The theme looks really beautiful and the environment literally points to extraordinarily strong workmanship, but K2 (like most similar films) slides on the surface and only grabs on to what is most grateful (or most visible). However, for the layman, the drama of the alpine environment is captured quite suggestively, and the film keeps one’s attention up to the end credits. (19/12/2004)