Two estranged brothers Cooper (Chace Crawford) and Toph (Tyler Labine) are reunited following their mother getting remarried. After the wedding, the two brothers decide to head up to their father's isolated cabin so that they can attempt to catch up and bond. However, when they try to leave the next day they discover that their vehicle won't start and decide that the best way to get their vehicle going is to try and thaw the vehicle out. A disastrous attempt to achieve this objective results in their vehicle still failing to start and their cabin burning down. This leads to the brothers trying to survive the harsh winter temperature with no food, no shelter and very little warmth...
I'm prepared to cut this film some slack and admit that it's hard to make a survival film without some flaws; hell I'll be damned if there's a perfect survival film out there, but this film is so stupid that it really does go beyond a simple case of 'suspending disbelief'.
Towards the end of the picture, Toph rings their mother to inform her that him and his brother are in trouble - quite why they didn't use the mobile phone at the start to ring her or even a breakdown company at the start is never explained? Surely most people would make sure they have full breakdown cover during a cold winter as your car is more likely to break down during the winter months (I live in England so I know all about cold starting problems in winter). It seemed to be another stupid and illogical contrivance that existed merely to try to create tension (which I'll hasten to add didn't work), but made absolutely no sense. If you have a mobile phone and you're in a perilous situation then why wouldn't you use it?? Even if you've got no credit, these days you could probably ring the emergency services and they could probably pinpoint your exact location from your mobile phone signal so again it never makes any sense.
Things get more ridiculous later in the film when Toph happens to stumble across a road by chance and manages to flag down a Highways Patrol Vehicle. OK you may class that as good fortune and perhaps it was, but it does beg the question as to why the 2 brothers were unable to find a road previously when they were walking round in broad daylight? Why didn't they head back down the road that they originally came up? Alright Cooper said they should head up a mountain as he knew there was a place to stay, but surely you'd have had better odds flagging a vehicle down on a road. I admit this aspect of the story puzzled me, but I was initially prepared to overlook it in the hope that the film would have had a fast-paced sense of urgency about it which it clearly doesn't and because of this it makes the holes in the story stand out all the more.
It's interesting that we later learn that their father died in the middle of nowhere from cramp which only confirmed my initial thoughts that stupidity must run in the family. We never really learn what was going on with their father and why he was wandering around in the middle of nowhere? Then again I gave up trying to understand this film by about the halfway point and just soldiered on valiantly to the end.
I'm prepared to acknowledge that this film is good on very odd occasions (some exchanges between the brothers are quite touching and I liked the way that Toph showed his 'good side' by looking after Cooper after he breaks his leg (although you have to get past lots of irritating dialogue to get to these brief good bits). In truth, Mountain Men is badly paced, and not particularly exciting or suspenseful. However, what really kills it is large portions of the plotting which are just moronic and are insulting to the intelligence.
I'm prepared to cut this film some slack and admit that it's hard to make a survival film without some flaws; hell I'll be damned if there's a perfect survival film out there, but this film is so stupid that it really does go beyond a simple case of 'suspending disbelief'.
Towards the end of the picture, Toph rings their mother to inform her that him and his brother are in trouble - quite why they didn't use the mobile phone at the start to ring her or even a breakdown company at the start is never explained? Surely most people would make sure they have full breakdown cover during a cold winter as your car is more likely to break down during the winter months (I live in England so I know all about cold starting problems in winter). It seemed to be another stupid and illogical contrivance that existed merely to try to create tension (which I'll hasten to add didn't work), but made absolutely no sense. If you have a mobile phone and you're in a perilous situation then why wouldn't you use it?? Even if you've got no credit, these days you could probably ring the emergency services and they could probably pinpoint your exact location from your mobile phone signal so again it never makes any sense.
Things get more ridiculous later in the film when Toph happens to stumble across a road by chance and manages to flag down a Highways Patrol Vehicle. OK you may class that as good fortune and perhaps it was, but it does beg the question as to why the 2 brothers were unable to find a road previously when they were walking round in broad daylight? Why didn't they head back down the road that they originally came up? Alright Cooper said they should head up a mountain as he knew there was a place to stay, but surely you'd have had better odds flagging a vehicle down on a road. I admit this aspect of the story puzzled me, but I was initially prepared to overlook it in the hope that the film would have had a fast-paced sense of urgency about it which it clearly doesn't and because of this it makes the holes in the story stand out all the more.
It's interesting that we later learn that their father died in the middle of nowhere from cramp which only confirmed my initial thoughts that stupidity must run in the family. We never really learn what was going on with their father and why he was wandering around in the middle of nowhere? Then again I gave up trying to understand this film by about the halfway point and just soldiered on valiantly to the end.
I'm prepared to acknowledge that this film is good on very odd occasions (some exchanges between the brothers are quite touching and I liked the way that Toph showed his 'good side' by looking after Cooper after he breaks his leg (although you have to get past lots of irritating dialogue to get to these brief good bits). In truth, Mountain Men is badly paced, and not particularly exciting or suspenseful. However, what really kills it is large portions of the plotting which are just moronic and are insulting to the intelligence.