Vertical Limit Movie Review:


This is the movie where I think we can safely say that Chris O' Donnell has definitely already reached the peak that his career will ever reach and is now on a downward curve to the level of the hacking actor grinding out the roles and never ever really coming up with that star quality you can see in a true star. Yeah sure he has been in a few good movies, but boy has he chosen to work in some awful clunkers. Batman and Robin and The Bachelor are two that spring readily to mind.

Vertical Limit tells the story of a mountain climber who has to climb K2 to rescue his sister who is trapped up the mountain. But this is Hollywood so that isn't enough of an imperative for him, he has already saved her a few years back, but he had to sacrifice his fathers life ( at his fathers insistence) to save her. Yes, this movie is that contrived.

And that is really the level that this movie is set at to be honest. The script is silly and cliché ridden. One of the devices the makers use is that the climbers carry explosives up the mountain in case they need them. Pardon? Can they be there for any other reason than for some super whizz bang explosions? Yes, and things inevitably do go wrong and the explosives do go off.

Martin Campbell directs the movie, but unlike Goldeneye, this is directed almost by the numbers with no zing or zang or invention. Call it a join the dots of directing if you will.

And the sets, in these days of super complex CGI and effects work, why do the sets look like badly made polystrene? Shouldn't the makers try and make us feel like they are actually on the mountain instead of a sound stage? Cliffhanger did so much better and that was years ago.

And finally as one tiny point that I guess sums up the laziness of this project, in the cold when you breath out doesn't your breath turn into steam? Not in this movie it doesn't. Guess they forgot.

Gary Gray

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