K2 and nitroglycerin. Dangerous enough?
Vertical Limit is a mountain action/effects
movie. Think
Cliff Hanger without
charisma. Or the terrorists. It is almost, but
not quite, as bad as it sounds. The start of
Vertical Limit has a lovely scene
where Dad chats to son and daughter on the side
of a sheer cliff. Something goes horribly wrong
and father snuffs it in a suicidal effort to
save his kids: a fine example of the selfish
gene in action if ever I saw one.
This opening serves to let the audience indulge
in a spot of altophobia and to generate the
mother of all guilt trips to motive the son
into making crazy decisions later on. (The son
is played by Chris O'Donnel who portrayed Robin
out of the 3rd and 4th (i.e. rubbish)
Batman
movies.)
This angst infuses the son with the will to
persuade 5 other nutters to attempt an unfeasibly
risky mountain rescue. The escapade is an attempt
to save the skin of his sister, when she and
two companions have gone and got themselves
into a rather nasty scrape on K2.
Because of an avalanche, the rescuers decide
to take some explosives to help clear away some
snow. Yes, it is silly. Amusingly, as a contrived
mechanism to engineer some cool special effects
scenes containing big explosions, each climber
takes with him/her enough nitroglycerin to trigger
a global nuclear winter.
Talking of effects scenes, these were the fun
parts of the movie. They were superb, a real
treat. The rest of the movie was just tedious
filler. It might have been better if the lead
had been a bit more, well, inspiring. O'Donnel
is a nice chap, but he has all the screen presence
of a depressed bean counter on a rainy day.
Having said that there is once scene in the
film depicting a minor and non-life threatening
injury that made me wince more than all the
deaths depicted in the film put together. Strange.
Finally the oft-shown Vertical Limit trailer
gave away some of the best surprise-moments.
(See my review of
Meet
The Parents for my diatribe on the subject
of Spoiler Movie Trailers.)
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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Strange how it is a sister, not girlfriend,
that was being rescued. If you can't snog
the damson in distress after the dramatic
liberation then the rescue is, well, unconsummated.
Vertical Limit contains
too much cheesy "we-must-live-up-to-father"
and "our-father-would-have-been-PROUD-of-us"
claptrap. Yes we got the point after the
first false, forced, wet and crass daddy
conversation between the siblings.
The villain of the piece was badly rendered.
There was too little sense of the girl
being in peril. There was not enough sense
that she was trapped with a monster.
The Ending: we're supposed to be happy
that one foolhardy human was saved when,
in order to save her, no less than four
rescuers met grizzly deaths. Why did they
try to make the ending so feel-good? (The
probable answer: American test audiences
do not like interesting, ambiguous endings)
This film would have been better had it
pointed out the irony that instead of
just their father's death on their conscience,
the hapless siblings now have to live
their lives with the ghosts of four more
climbers.
By the way, the scene that affected me
was the one where the blonde takes off
her glove to reveal her dislocated finger.
The rest of the audience groaned too.
I'm pretty sure that real pain neurons
fired in my brain. The ensuing conversation
made me squirm, I kept mentally pleading,
nay, screaming, "Do something! Do
Something! Fix that bent-back digit!!!"
even though I knew that they were acting
and there was not really any injured finger.
Strange. That part of the movie triggered
in me a painfully involutary suspension
of disbelief.
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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Terrorists appear on the scene for no apparent
reason except to provide more wacky deaths,
more stunts, more effects and less touchy-feely
crap. This is supposed to be a testosterone
fuelled action film, not a made-for-TV movie.
03 Feb 2001
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Garret | Subject: | 2002-07-16 18:50:11 |
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