Vertical Limit

It's not the painfully thin story line, predictable plot or shallow stereotypical characters featured in this movie. It's not even the constant stream of amazingly improbable events, which give you the feeling the director hopelessly underestimated the reasoning abilities of his audience.

What left me disappointed and even a bit annoyed after seeing "Vertical Limit" is the absolute and total failure of this movie to capture any of the real thrill, excitement and hardship involved in scaling the world's second highest mountain.

Books like Jon Krakauers' "Into thin Air" and movies like David Breashears' "Everest" prove that you don't need helicopter rotor blades threatening to dismember climbers or unstable nitroglycerine that explodes if exposed to sunlight to create an exciting story. When Martin Campbell decided to deny the audience any sense of the real technical, physical and emotional challenges of climbing K2, and therefore had to resort to action-movie style heroes, villains and explosions, he left behind a movie too unconvincing, for me to enjoy.

I'm surprised by all the hostility shown toward this movie on IMDb. Had I read the reviews here, I would have skipped this well-made and entertaining film. For one thing, it was a pleasure to see an action movie that didn't involve guns and shooting - enough of that nonsense. Instead, this film is full of spectacular scenery, good looking actors and actresses, and some unexpected insights into issues of morality, judgment and sacrifice. As far as the accuracy about details of climbing, I couldn't care less. This is not a how-to movie. And as for the wisdom of transporting nitroglycerin across dangerous terrain, check out Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece, "The Wages of Fear" or its excellent remake by William Friedkin, "Sorcerer." Neither one of these great films was hampered by such a questionable premise. I highly recommend "Vertical Limit" for exciting escapism.

When I saw this shortly after it came out on DVD, it got high marks just for the spectacular sound alone. It had some of the best rear-speaker sound I had ever heard. It was a showpiece for DVD players at the time.

The movie is interesting with it's main fault being a common one: overdone action at the end. Along the way, however, it has many almost jaw-dropping scenes and some spectacular mountain scenery which looks great on the sharp DVD transfer. The stunt work in here is also incredible. Martin Campbell, the same director who did The Mask Of Zorro and Goldeneye, is good at producing eye-popping action scenes.

The dialog at times is juvenile, but it could have been worse. The profanity was lower than expected, too. How accurate is it concerning mountain-climbing? Probably like most films: totally inaccurate, at least that's what a mountain- climbing expert told me, and I believe him.

All in all, however, a far better film than I expected.....strictly for the entertainment.

Years after he and his sister survived a climbing accident where their father died, Peter and Annie Garrett find themselves on K2 for different reasons. Peter is on the foothills taking pictures for National Geographic, while Annie is part of the documentary crew with playboy millionaire Elliot Vaughn, who is aiming to reach the summit in time to promote the launch of his new airline. However when a storm comes in., most of the party are killed with only Elliot, Annie and leader Tom surviving in a crevice. Peter puts together a rescue mission, led by veteran Montgomery Wick.

It is just this film's bad luck that I watched it only a matter of days after I saw the much better Touching The Void. That film had me on the edge of my seat with my mouth agape at times with a story of a climbing accident and the aftermath. However Vertical Limit doesn't go for realism at any point. The plot is a real mess; it doesn't risk having it's thrills from the effects of the mountain so it also adds a traditional bad guy and a `wages of fear' twist involving the climbers carrying nitro in their backpacks. That's not to say the film doesn't have exciting moments - the opening scene is very dramatic and powerful (despite O'Donnell's crap wide-eyed acting) but it never reaches that again. Instead, it settles for effect shots of climbers hanging over great heights etc. These are visually impressive and they do manage to get a sense of urgency to them but it never lasts long.

It's a shame, because Cliffhanger was enjoyable and Void showed that the real drama can come from just the mountain itself, however here it keeps adding more stuff to try and force drama out of the situation. The lack of real characters is a problem - instead we have very wide clichés almost; `dudes', wise old men, ruthless billionaires, sexy mountain chick and clean cut siblings. Aside from the opening sequence, it is hard to feel an emotional connection to any of them and, as the latest disposable actor hangs over a drop awaiting the chop I was more focused on how good it looked rather than nerves over the outcome. O'Donnell is as bland as he often can be and didn't impress me at all; likewise Tunney was a bit `all-American' for my taste. Paxton could have been sending up Richard Branson if he hadn't been playing it so straight. In a similar vein, Glenn would have been better if he'd put his tongue in his cheek and acknowledged how daft his character was! The support cast or `drop monkeys' as I call them are an average enough bunch but the film basically kills them off one by one like a horror movie - to much audience apathy I might add.

Overall this is an OK film if you can just turn off your brain and enjoy the vertigo-inducing effects. However with no good plot, dialogue or characters it will be very difficult for anyone to really get involved in the film beyond this aspect. I can only plea to you to seek out a film with a fraction the budget of this and that's Touching The Void. It is a true story with no digital effects but it is a similar setting but much, much better.

While mountaineering is one of the most exhilarating of sports it has produced little good fiction, and few good fictional movies, though there have been some excellent documentaries ('The Man who Skied Down Everest', the Imax 'Everest' film, for example). Somehow, when it comes to fiction, the clichés take over, and this film, with some genuinely gorgeous camera-work and impressive stunts, is full of them. The wealthy megalomaniac determined to conquer K2 at any cost, the climber who lost his nerve when his father was killed who pushes himself into action to save his sister, stuck in a crevass high up the mountain with the moneyed one, the bitter old man of the mountains who is essential to the rescue, the guide who has sold out, It's all there. One does expect some improbability of plot in a film like this, but the thought that someone might cart Pakistani Army liquid nitro-glycerine in back packs to the top of K2 to blast a crevasse open really was a bit much.

Apart from a very attractive opening sequence in Utah (Monument Valley, I think) the film was shot in the New Zealand Alps, with a few clips of the genuine Karkoram Himalaya spliced in. For this viewer, it brought back pleasant memories of climbing in the University holidays around the Southern Alps. But climbing is a dangerous sport; on one trip I was accompanied by four people, all of whom subsequently died in separate climbing accidents (one on Makalu, next to Everest). There is a fair amount of special effects malarky (no-one, not even Temuera Morrison pretending to be Pakistani, would fly an old military helicopter so close to a mountain wall at 21,000 feet), but there are also some genuinely stirring shots.

Unfortunately, the acting for the most part matches the script. Chris Connelly, good at sensitive young men, is wrong for the brother bent on rescue (it's more of a part for Bruce Willis), and Bill Paxton is only moderately menacing as the ruthless Richard Branson-style billionaire. In fact the only decent piece of acting is Scott Glenn's Wick, the veteran with attitude. The'comic' Australian climbing brothers, Ces and Cyril, or whatever their names were, were profoundly embarrassing – I guess Ben Mendelsohn will be hoping no-one will recognise him with a balaclava on his head. There were also lackluster performances from the two female leads, Robin Tunney and Izabella Scorupco. One of them, Scorupco, is an ex-Bond girl ('Goldeneye') – the casting people obviously didn't realise she was going to be spending the entire movie wrapped up in Gore-Tex. There's no sex at high altitude – it's too damned cold and anyway survival takes precedence over procreation.

I think Roger Ebert got it right on this one – a 'B' movie with an 'A' movie budget. There are all sorts of anomalies – the lack of visible water vapour issuing from the climbers, their sprightly behaviour even after hours at 26,000 feet, the use of north wall hammers to attack a rock/ice pitch, the miraculous helicopter piloting – but somehow the magnificence of those great peaks comes through. The worst thing about a movie like this is that it portrays the mountains as hellish, which is far from the truth. What is it the psalm says 'I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my strength'? Climbing is one thing I have never regretted doing, and it would be a pity if people were put off the sport by stuff like this. Actually I think the people who do attempt peaks like K2 would see this film as preposterous, overblown Hollywood brown smelly stuff, and they'd be right. But there is some nice scenery.