(I’ll stick to scuba diving, biking, and hiking - thank you very much…)
CAST: Chris O’Donnell, Bill Paxton, Robin Tunney, Scott Glenn, Izabella Scorupco, Nicholas Lea, Temuera Morrison, Stuart Wilson, Alexander Siddig, Steve Le Marquand, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Taylor.
DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and a lot of schmucks who’d be fine if they would’ve gone to the beach instead…
I am an avid nature buff. Give me a mountain bike and a trail and I will navigate that bitch like Lewis and Clark. Give me a forest and I will camp out for a week, live off the land, and be just fine. Give me a coral reef and I will make like Jacques Cousteau (but, well, a little younger and hotter) and explore the crap out of it. My point is, I love the outdoors and I have the scars to prove it.
Even with my deep and abiding passions for all things R.E.I and ScubaPro-related, though, one thing you will never see me doing is… hanging from a sheer cliff face with only a rope keeping me from joining all the devils in hell. Fuck. That. Noise. Not this schmuck, thank you. I’ll stick to my mountain bike, my hiking boots, and my wet suit. I’d rather look a moray eel in the face than a 3,000-foot drop.
Unfortunately, the characters in VERTICAL LIMIT are of a different opinion. These folks can’t get enough of dangling over abyssal canyons, precipices, and vertiginous cliffs. It’s like they get a mind-blowing orgasm out of the whole deal, or something. That would be pretty much the only way you‘d get me to do it. Actually, scratch that… I can get laid just as fantastically in the woods and on a beach. So, as I said before: Hell to the No.
Our hero is Peter Garrett (Chris O’Donnell), and he obviously hails from a family of climbers. When we first meet Peter, he is on a climbing trip in the American Southwest with his sister Annie (Robin Tunney) and father Royce (Stuart Wilson). In addition to several other climbers, the Garretts are scaling a sheer rock face that looks to be taller than most downtown San Francisco office buildings. There’s the requisite bickering and bantering and joshing to convince us that they’re actually related. Then things quickly go south, figuratively speaking.
Some of the amateurs (read: assholes who shouldn’t have been up there to begin with) climbing above the Garretts screw up - and plunge to their deaths. Which would be fine - if it weren’t for the fact that the falling morons slam into our intrepid family on the way down, dislodging them as well. Long story short, Annie, Peter, and Royce end up dangling from the rock face on a rope that was meant to support only two people.
How good are you at math? Needless to say, our family has problems.
Royce, being at the end of the rope, orders Peter to cut the line so that the cam holding them to the rock face won’t break. Yup, our noble Royce wants his own son to send him plummeting to his death - so that Peter and Annie can live. Excuse me while I sob for a second here…
… okay I’m back. Anyway, as you can imagine, Peter and Annie have an issue with this. Especially Peter, since he’s the one carrying the knife. But with cam about to give, and Royce yelling “CUT IT! CUT IT! CUT IT! CUT IT! OR YOU AND YOUR SISTER WILL DIE, TOO!” - what else is the guy supposed to do?
Needless to say, a few seconds later - a body slams into the ground several thousand feet below. Just one body. Talk about hard decisions, eh…
Flash forward three years, and we find that Peter is now a National Geographic photographer who has been assigned to the Himalayas to take photos of snow leopards. And, oh by the way, he’s forsaken climbing because of the tragedy with his father. Smart lad. Unfortunately, Annie didn’t learn anything because not only is she still a climber, but she’s also shooting a documentary about a K2 ascent along with asshole billionaire tycoon Elliott Vaughn (Bill Paxton) and golden-boy climber Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea). In other words, it’s not enough that she’s putting her life in danger, but she’s filming it, too.
Learning of Annie’s presence nearby, Peter scurries over to the base camp to visit. Turns out that there’s been tension between the two ever since that terrible day three years ago. See, Annie didn’t think that Peter should have cut the rope back then. She feels that they should’ve plummeted to their deaths along with their Pops. Riiiiiiight.
Peter, being more pragmatic, tells her that he did what he felt was right. She replies that she has nothing left to say to him - and promptly heads off to climb K2 with Vaughn and McLaren. Peter, being a class act, doesn’t say what someone else would have probably said: “Don’t freeze your ass off, bitch.”
Sure enough, Annie decision to continue to tempt fate catches up to her: on their way up K2, a storm comes in and basically shoves them down into an ice cave. One too deep to climb out of. To make matters worse, McLaren is injured by the fall. And Annie is stuck with Vaugh, who is basically a worthless piece of shit.
Back at base camp, Peter learns of the accident - and quickly realizes that he has to get over his fear of climbing - fast - and lead an expedition to save his sister. He ends up recruiting the following crazy folks: (1) Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn), grizzled loner and mountain man who knows the Himalayas like the back of his hand and whose wife disappeared up on K2 four years ago; (2) Kareem Nazir (Alexander Siddig), devout Muslim who is always mellow and chill (is he smoking something?); (3) Monique Aubertine (Izabella Scorupco), hot French-Canadian base camp nurse who has serious googly-eyes for Peter; (4) Cyril Bench (Steve Le Marquand) and (5) Malcolm Bench (Ben Mendelsohn), crazy Aussie brothers who are forever macking on Monique.
The six climbers hit the slopes hard, trying to get up to the ice cave within 22 hours - before Annie, McLaren, and Vaughn either freeze to death or get on each other’s nerves and start using their ice axes on one another. I’m betting on the latter.
Oh, and just because things aren’t exciting enough, Peter and his gang are bringing canisters of highly explosive nitroglycerin to help blast through the ice cave. Or something. Meaning not only do they have to worry about dangerous drop-offs, they also have worry about the ticking time bombs in their backpacks. Great.
Will Peter and his rag-tag team of would-be rescuers succeed? Will they all make it up the mountain? Or will some of them get added to the body count? Who will live? Who will croak? For that matter, will Annie and her own bunch turn into popsicles before Peter, Monique, and the others show up? Or will those canisters just blow them all up to Kingdom Come? Will they all join Wick’s wife in the statistics of missing climbers? Why the hell didn’t they just all go to Cancun?
Whatever. At least they all look great in climbing gear. Especially Chris O’Donnell and Izabella Scorupco. Those two should be the spokesmodels for REI or something…
BUT, SERIOUSLY: Echoing many beats from CLIFFHANGER (1993), this film manages to be a slightly better film by keeping the characters human-scale and relatable. CLIFFHANGER’s folks were over-the-top and cartoonish, which is fine for entertainment purposes, but unfortunately also has the effect of not allowing us to take the action seriously in parts. Not that VERTICAL LIMIT is model of plausibility, but I found it easier to be swept along for the ride because of the believability of its characters. I bought into their plights and the premise a lot faster than I did with CLIFFHANGER’s.
The action scenes are top-flights and nail-biting, especially with the added threat of the nitroglycerin. This chemical bring the ironic twist of being both the characters’ potential salvation - and also their potential doom. The thrills and suspense generated by these sequences should come as no surprise, since Martin Campbell has the directorial reigns for VERTICAL LIMIT. Campbell helmed two of the best James Bond films with GOLDENEYE (1995) and CASINO ROYALE (2006). He also showcased his ability to blend character, suspense, and action with the very good EDGE OF DARKNESS from earlier this year.
The cast is uniformly strong, with Chris O’Donnell the perfect everyman as Peter Garrett. O’Donnell has a way of holding the screen without hogging it, and casting him instead of someone who’s more of an attention-grabber was a smart move. He graciously lets the rest of the cast have their fifteen minutes (figuratively speaking) in the spotlight, which is good because VERTICAL LIMIT is really more of an ensemble piece rather than a star vehicle. O’Donnell ably conveys Peter’s great trauma - this is a guy who killed his father, after all - while also showing his desire to move past it by bridging the gap with his sister.
As Annie, Robin Tunney is suitably spunky, capable, and vulnerable. She has a believable brother-sister rapport with O’Donnell that goes a long way in selling the movie. After all, if you don’t believe that Peter would risk everything to save his sister, there is no movie to watch. All that “cliff-hanging” would be for nothing. Bill Paxton is similarly well-cast as the treacherous and opportunistic millionaire whose vanity is what gets them into their deadly predicament. Scott Glenn is appropriately stoic and mysterious as the mountain man who may hold the key to Annie’s rescue. His act of sacrifice in the end is a touching and fitting book-end to the one we saw at the beginning.
As for the rag-tag bunch of would-be rescuers, they’re all vivid and memorable. Steve Le Marquand and Ben Mendelsohn are funny as the rambunctious Australian brothers, while Alexander Siddig is the picture of calm graciousness as Kareem, the devout Muslim of the group. Siddig is just as good in this small role as he was in his bigger role from the recent CAIRO TIME.
The best member of the team, though, is the beautiful and talented Izabella Scorupco. While Robin Tunney as Annie is clearly the main heroine, Scorupco’s Monique is clearly a strong second. Tough, kind, capable, and resourceful, Monique is an invaluable addition to Peter’s team - and a very attractive one, at that. Scorupco also clicks with O’Donnell, and make a good couple. Martin Campbell cast her as the main Bond Girl in GOLDENEYE, and her Natalya Simonova was one of the best heroines in the pantheon. Campbell reportedly then offered her the female lead in THE MASK OF ZORRO, but Scorupco turned it down. That role made Catherine Zeta-Jones a star. Scorupco was then offered the female lead in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, which she also turned down. That role nabbed Kim Basinger an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Say what you want about Izabella Scorupco, but you have to respect her for passing on some prime gigs to focus on her family. That’s pretty admirable.
In the end, VERTICAL LIMIT manages to be a solid action-thriller by keeping the action reasonably believable and focusing on the characters along with the explosions. This was something that CLIFFHANGER couldn’t pull off (review coming) - which was all about action, and most of the time not believable. Then again, what the hell do you expect from a Sylvester Stallone movie?
