My palms get sweaty just thinking about this documentary. It's one thing to climb up the El Capitan mountain summit in Yosemite National Park with ropes and safety equipment, but to do it without any gear at all is a whole other feat. In Free Solo, we meet Alex Honnold as he plans to achieve his lifetime dream of climbing up the face of the world's most famous rock – that sentence could have easily ended there and still be impressive but this is the legendary rock climber Honnold after all – without a rope. Honnold's jaw-dropping ascent up the vertical rock face is a tense watch (even from my living room's low to the ground couch), but the documentary also offers some respite from the sporting action by breaking up the narrative with scenes of the daredevil's home life with his friends and girlfriend. It's an extraordinary, nerve-racking watch that left me in awe.
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