HANGING ON.('Touching the Void' and 'Crimson Gold')(Movie Review)

Do not go and see "Touching the Void" if you suffer from a fear of heights. Or a fear of death, which amounts to the same thing. Or a fear of Peru. That was the destination of two young British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, in 1985. What happened to them, in a lonely place, has since become a mixture of hot moral issue and snowy myth. First, Simpson described their experience in his best-selling book, "Touching the Void," published three years later. Now comes the movie.

The director is Kevin Macdonald, whose reputation rests on documentaries; his 1999 film "One Day in September" won an Oscar for its account of the hostage-taking at the 1972 Munich ...