Deep Winter

Introduction

There are skiing films and films with skiing in them. I kind of prefer the latter, whether it be guilty pleasure Bond of OHMSS or one of my all-time favourite films, John Cusack's Better Off Dead - which is just a funny comedy that happens to have some skiing in it.

Deep Winter is supposedly a skiing film about two old friends and their ambition to conquer a treacherous Alaskan mountain, albeit on film. It starts off by introducing us to the main hero, Tyler Crowe (Eric Lively), one of the golden hopes of the US Olympic skiing team. The only problem is that Crowe is a bit of a lone wolf who doesn't listen to his coaches, figuring that he's such a great skier that he doesn't need their advice. Of course, as everyone knows from films, that way leads to disaster as Crowe proves with a major crash on his big day and is then kicked off the team.

Heading home in a sulk, Crowe meets up with his friend, Mark Rider (Kellan Lutz), a snow boarder who is now quite famous after appearing in a few MTV-style extreme sports films.  Rider wants to tackle some awesome peaks, pushed by pushy MTV-style exec Stephen Weaks (Luke Goss), and Rider wants his old pal to tag along. Things are going well until Crowe bumps into an old female friend in Elisa (Peyton List) and they do the bump. Turns out that Elisa is Rider's sister and he's now in a bit of a mood with Crowe, so they fall out with Rider wanting to go his own way and tackle the big Alaskan peak by himself.

But guess what, things go bad, presumably because Rider isn't concentrating due to his anger with his mate and he snuffs it whilst attempting the run. And so Crowe comes back to try and do the honourable thing to honour his friend by completing the run that his dead mucker couldn't and in the process get the girl and live happily ever after. Of course, this may only happen if he actually pays heed to instruction from wise old mountain guide and chopper pilot Dean (Michael Madsen)…

Visual

Superb cinematography with some quite gorgeous shots of Alaskan peaks and snow. The shots of the skiers themselves are quite something as well.

Overall

If this film simply consisted of shots of the scenery and skiers, then it might be worth watching, but throw in quite possibly one of the lamest and most predictable scripts ever and you have a film sadly destined for the bargain bin (or satellite channel).  There is simply no redeeming value to this film and I was so bored I actually fell asleep and missed most of it.  I did, however, correctly guess what happened which shows either how lame this film really is or just how jaded and cynical I've become as a viewer.

Luke Goss plays the bad guy again, but this time he's simply a corporate bad guy. He's simply trying to pad out his film resume, so I'm not going to be too harsh on him. Michael Madsen, however, I can't forgive for this dross with the most predictable and boring ending ever. What was he thinking?  

I don't want to write too much more on this as I feel it's bad enough just having to think about it- and I still have to build the disc details to host this. Just avoid…