A Downhill Battle
Tyler Crowe (Eric lively) is a top skier, that is until he crashes out during a competition and his manager decides he can no longer take the risk on him. It leads Tyler up to Alaska where his childhood friend Mark Rider (Kellan Lutz) has set up work for them filming an extreme sports video for Stephen Weaks (Luke Goss). But this video is going to push them to the limit as the run they need to film on is widely known as being unrideable, not that Weaks care.
The closest I have come to the world of skiing and snowboarding is one of those computer games which if you banged the buttons hard enough you could do some ridiculous tricks down a half pipe and over an obstacle course. You may ask why then did I sit down to watch "Deep Winter" a movie about skiing? Well whilst my expectations were low I spotted the names Michael Madsen, Luke Goss and Robert Carradine in the cast list and thought well why not.
Well as it turns out I can give you plenty of reasons why not starting with the fact the actors which attracted me to watch are barely in it, just recognizable names collecting a pay check and duping audiences in to watching. But more significantly the absence of an important storyline is the main reason to side step "Deep Winter" as for a movie which lasts 96 minutes what storyline there is takes up at most 30 minutes and every second of those 30 minutes is predictable, built around instantly recognizable cliches which offer the serious movie fan little in the form of entertainment.
So what does that mean then? Well it means we have an attractive cast, a typical romantic subplot and lots of extreme sports activity for the storyline to be built around. Yes the focus here is more on entertaining young adrenalin junkies with flashy snow based action rather than story and I suppose if that is all you are looking for it might entertain but offers up nothing for anyone else.
What this all boils down to is that "Deep Winter" is in my book an extreme sports video masquerading as a movie and whilst if extreme skiing is your thing it might entertain it does little for anyone else seeking more other than some nice snowy vistas.
