As CGI gets progressively more realistic—at least
where anything except the human face is concerned—it's worth wondering
whether it'll eventually doom extreme-sports movies like Steep, which is notable largely for its
shots of skiers tackling terrifying near-vertical slopes. As amazing as those
sequences are, they already look unreal in this special-effects-driven age, and
it's easy to imagine audience interest dissipating as it becomes possible to
animate such death-defying sequences, then let lazy viewers experience them
personally, in 3-D IMAX with surround sound. Such technological cheating might
mean fewer skiing deaths every year, but it'd also just keep heightening the
already-considerable disappointment that Steep's extreme-skiing pioneers express
over all the people who aren't out making "the
choices to live life to the fullest… living like lions, not lambs."
Throughout Steep, longtime TV producer and first-time feature director Mark Obenhaus doles out the actual skiing footage
sparingly, filling in the space between with a pocket history of extreme
skiing, and plenty of talking-head interviews with extreme-ski heroes like Bill
Briggs, the first to ski Wyoming's Grand Teton in 1971. Briggs' story is
phenomenal—in spite of a surgically fused right hip that gave him a
pronounced limp, he climbed the mountain (alone, after his companions gave up)
and made the five-hour descent solo. The stories that follow, from the likes of
Doug Coombs, Mohawk enthusiast Glen Plake, The Blizzard Of AAHHH's director Greg Stump, and base-jumping innovator Shane
McConkey, become repetitive by comparison, except for those involved enough in
the scene to care who tackled what mountain first. While the skiiers'
enthusiasm and dedication is infectious, there are only so many possible
variations on much-expressed sentiments like "I didn't choose this life, it
chose me" and "The closer you come to killing yourself, the more alive you
feel."
But every time Steep threatens to get
repetitive, Obenhaus cuts in some breathtaking footage of an interview subject
taking on a seemingly impossible mountainside. Sports docs like this tend to be
either extremely niche-y or generic enough to reach a wider audience, and Steep falls firmly into the
latter category. But enthusiasts and neophytes alike should be able to join
together in gasping at the sight of people plunging down vertical walls of ice,
taking their lives into their own hands for a brief, lion-lifed adrenaline charge.