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.

Usually I do not care very much for mountain climbing films as they usually have a very similar plot. This film had plenty of action with Helicopters flying all over the place and horrible snow storms and also entrapment in caves deep under tons of snow and ice. The film starts out with a father, son and daughter adventuring up a steep mountain during a very sunny day and having a wonderful time with each other. Their father was a very experienced climber and all of a sudden a tragic situation happens and a horrible life or death decision had to be made within seconds. There is lots of scary scenes and plenty of explosions and more action than you can handle.

I can't believe how many people pick on this movie! It's a movie...and movies are meant to entertain. I thought it was a good story line, very suspenseful & emotional. Yes, there was a lot of unbelievable problems that arose, and maybe the acting wasn't all that great. Chris O'Donnell is very cute to look at, but I have to admit he's not the best actor out there. Scott Glenn is great in every movie he is in. The rest of the actors were OK. I just don't see why this movie was picked on so much. I don't watch movies so I can pick on them, I watch them for entertainment..and I was entertained by this movie. I would recommend it to anyone who is wanting to see an edge-of-your seat, emotional movie.

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.

I had high hopes for this film after seeing the thrilling opening sequence in Monument Valley, Utah; but, alas, it was not to be.

THE STORY: A famous female climber gets stuck in an ice cave with two others near the top of K2, the second highest mountain on Earth. Her brother, who has sworn off climbing because of his father's climbing death, has no choice but to assemble a team to rescue the trio.

WHAT WORKS: As already mentioned, the opening sequence is excellent, the locations are great (the New Zealand Alps), the story pretty much keeps your attention (until the absurdities really mount up -- pun intended) and both Robin Tunney & Izabella Scorupco are deliciously beautiful.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: As the story continues the believability decreases severely. In fact, the crisis/suspense/action sequences are so EXTREME and strung so close together (especially as the movie proceeds) they tend to make you bust out laughing -- the very OPPOSITE reaction the creators wanted. By the very end the ridiculous overkill made me lose interest in whatever story was supposed to be there.

FINAL ANALYSIS: I was hoping for something unexpectedly great like "The Edge," but ended up with a fun but ultimately shallow time-waster. For comparison, "Cliffhanger" is "Apocalypse Now" next to "Vertical Limit."

GRADE: C.