“The Climb” kicks off with a bravura opening sequence, one of many that features shots of an extensive length. Friends Mike (Michael Angelo Covino) and Kyle (Kyle Marvin) power through through a hellish passage on some European bike ride—when Mike gets a bit ahead of him, he yells back that he’s slept with Kyle’s fiancee. The two argue while Kyle tries to catch up, like brothers playing a game of tag that just got real. Covino announces his visual ambition in a major way by letting the camera roll uninterrupted throughout, filming them as they go up different hills and while bounding between various dramatic beats. Their rapport quickly achieves layers, of being abrasive and also beautifully goofy, with brilliant visual tension—Kyle huffs and puffs in the background after this life-shattering news takes even more wind out of him, and tries to catch up with Mike in the foreground so that he can, as Kyle promises, kick his ass.
Written by Covino and Marvin, the story concerns Mike and Kyle’s friendship through different rocky chapters in their lives, and uses composed long takes to capture the immediacy of those interactions. Mike and Kyle go through numerous episodes in which you think their bond would be destroyed, as with the opening bomb that Mike drops, but their great screenplay’s deeply entrenched motivations and needs, their elasticity can prove stronger than the shocking things that happen. Covino plays a guy who proves to be extremely flawed and unlikable—a bad friend in a lot of ways, and yet the script offers a natural idea of Kyle and Mike’s very complicated dynamic.
The biggest threat in Mike’s mind to Kyle and Mike’s friendship, other than himself, is a woman named Marissa (Gayle Rankin). Kyle and Marissa announce their engagement to his family members one holiday, and it has the air of Kyle going along with something that the considerably more forceful Marissa wants to get off the list. When a depressed Mike saunters back into Kyle’s life, uncertain that Marissa loves him, the three of them make for a contentious trio who lead with their characters’ mysterious endgames. As Mike and Marissa battle over Kyle in hilarious wars of words, their performances are excellent and fully alive across the board.
