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How realistic can it be when in the end it is acceptable to lose four people in an attempt to rescue three people (and ultimately only save one of those three)? My answer is not very realistic, which is what Vertical Limit is all about. The film stars Chris O'Donnell (The Bachelor) as Peter Garrett, son of famed mountain climber Royce Garrett (Stuart Wilson, Enemy of the State), and sister of Annie Garrett (Robin Tunney, End of Days). We begin at the beginning where all three of the Garretts are rock climbing in the desert when something goes wrong. Some amateur climbers above them have an accident and fall down becoming entangled with the Garretts. Both amateurs soon fall to their deaths, but the damage is done to the Garrett crew. Royce orders his son to cut him loose in order to save his sister and himself because he fears the last anchor point will fail with all three of them attached and kill them all. So bye, bye to daddy as he goes splat on the desert floor, which drives a rift between the two survivors because Annie thinks all three could have survived. Vertical Limit then skips ahead a couple years to the Himalayan Range in Asia where Peter is filming wildlife for National Geographic. Peter soon finds out that his sister has recently arrived on K2 to take part in an expedition up the mountain with billionaire Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton, U-571). Elliot wants to make it up to the summit at an exact time so that he can watch the inaugural flight of his airline, so he has hired the best climber Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea) to lead the ascent up K2. However things don't go quite as planned when a storm rolls in and takes out most of the expedition save Tom, Annie, and Elliot. But the three of them are trapped buried in a crevasse with time running out as the high altitude slowly kills them. So now Peter wants to lead a rescue crew up to save them, but they need special equipment to free those trapped in the ice. Instead of the special equipment, they decide on nitroglycerine, which makes finding volunteers difficult. They need five people besides Peter, and experienced guide Skip (Robert Taylor, The Matrix) signs on as does Kareem Nazir (Alexander Siddig) since his brother is feared dead on the mountain. So they need three more climbers, so one of billionaire Elliot's associates offers $500,000 to all the climbers which gets the class clowns Malcolm (Ben Mendelsohn ) and Cyril (Steve Le Marquand) Bench to join up. Then last but not least is Monique (Izabella Scorupco) who signs on so she can escape the mountain and go back to France and become a doctor, plus she likes Peter. Soon after assembling the crew they realize they won't have enough time to reach them unless they get a faster climber, so they try to get Montgomery Wick (Scott Glen) to join up since he is the fastest climber on the mountain. They eventually get the aging Wick to come along, but he comes more for revenge than to help save the daughter of an old friend. This is where most of the excitement comes, and the laughs. The excitement comes from the climbing and the nitro, while the laughs are mainly provided by Malcolm and Cyril in this race against time. The rest of the cast for Vertical Limit includes Temuera Morrison, Roshan Seth, and David Hayman. The scenery was spectacular, the action was great, and the jokes were funny. The acting was decent, but that wasn't what the movie was about. The one problem I had was the believability of the story penned by Robert King. The director Martin Campbell did well with the story, its just that the story is completely unrealistic. You would not carry around nitroglycerine in a backpack up the side of a mountain, and you would not risk that many lives to try and save three people when the odds are that much against you. So for the About-Movies.com rating I give the film seven couches with the knock being a lack of reality. Ta da! Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:49:58 AM |
