Jmovie review: Peak: The Rescuers / Gakku

WHAT IS IT?

Mountain rescue movie with Oguri Shun, Nagasawa Masami, Watabe Atsuro and Gira gira. Oguri Shun is Sanpo, this super mountain rescuer who always has a stupid smile on his face. Masami is the newbie rescuer who does all the usual things that newbie characters do.

WHAT I LIKED

- Good casting

- Great mountain views and tracking helicopter shots

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

- Cramming a lot of stories into a 2 hour running time.

- Feels like a Japanese version of a Michael Bay movie where instead of an explosion every 15 minutes, it tries to create too many moving emotional moments with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The result is that the movie doesn't allow the characters and stories to breath and dulls the emotional impact.

- Horrible CG work that looks really, really fake. Its a mountain climbing movie ffs. They should have done a lot of scenes with far wideshots of stunt people at actual mountains and extreme close ups of the actors to hide the background. I know its not Hollywood big budget but if you don't have the money, spend it on when you really need it. Its a mountain rescue movie and obvious CG just takes me out of it.

Decent shot of Oguri Shun carrying dude on his back while climbing out of a crevice..

.. turns into fakest CG rope 1st person perspective ever.

Whoever did this composite image did a shoddy job.

SUMMARY

Instantly forgettable bombardment of try hard tragic and touching scenes masquerading as an action movie.