Very much reminiscent and of a piece with fellow non-fiction extreme-skiing flick First Descent, director Mark Obenhaus’ Steep is an engaging documentary look at thrill-seeking slope masters and legends. Powered by legitimately breathtaking cinematography, this streamlined flick serves as an ample, exhilarating showcase for the world’s best freestyle skiers, who go beyond their dreams in conquering some of the craziest, near-vertical runs ever faced.

From the sheer cliffs of Grand Teton and the treachery of Chamonix France to the untouched Alaskan peaks of Valdez, these hardcore skiers sacrifice their lives for a thrill, but what a thrill it is. Legends Jean-Marc Boivin, Pierre Tardivel, Anselme Baud and Patrick Vallencant, among others, are all captured in stunning period footage, and a well-communicated historical overview of freestyle, downhill extreme skiing highlights both just how much of a personal endeavor this pastime was before it evolved into something more approaching a sport. The big sell here, though, is of course just the imagery on display, and the fantastically beautiful photography of some of the most magnificent mountain peaks on the globe — along with the requisite devastating avalanches and fatal spills — deliver plenty of gape-mouthed drama. There’s also a slight environmental bent to the picture, as several of the skiers talk about how climate change conditions have rendered Chamonix impossible to ski nowadays.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Steep comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and optional English and French subtitles. Bonus features kick off with an audio commentary track with director Obenhaus and skiers Andrew McLean and Ingrid Backstrom. There’s also a 13-minute Q&A session from the movie’s 2007 AFI Fest presentation, where McLean fields a question and talks about skiing on all seven continents. The best bonus feature, though, is a lean yet still superb 17-minute making-of featurette which assays the astonishing means by which Obenhaus and his crew captured some of the skiing footage. For back-country work, this meant laying in cable-cams with ridge-to-ridge wire, a process captured with base-camp shots from helicopters, which were also used to freight in all the production infrastructure. Wrapping things up are two-and-a-half minutes of photo montages, plus a March 2006 interview with Doug Coombs from La Grave, France. Also included are preview trailers for My Kid Could Paint That, The Natural, Across the Universe, Persepolis, Talladega Nights and five other Sony DVD releases. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)