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Review Summary

One of the daredevils in “Steep,” a documentary about extreme skiing, insists he is not hooked on the adrenaline rush of this death-defying sport. His denial is hard to believe. In one scene after another of this movie, written and directed by Mark Obenhaus, skiers hurtle down slopes at angles of 55 degrees or greater and leap off precipices into the unknown. The tiniest miscalculation, we are repeatedly told, could result in death. The sport’s practitioners — addicts might be a better word — would rather talk about how extreme skiing puts them totally in the moment and gives them an appreciation of life so acute it makes this sport, which has a high fatality rate, worth pursuing at all costs. There is a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo about how mountains are living, breathing things whose moods must be gauged before you venture onto their slopes; on a bad day a grouchy mountain can bite back. Behind it all is the same competitive spirit that disciples of religious cults dish out to the uninitiated. — Stephen Holden, The New York Times