Vertical Limit Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)December 8th, 2000
http://www.susangranger.com/
Susan Granger's review of "VERTICAL LIMIT" (Sony Pictures Entertainment)
I must confess that I am vertically challenged, meaning that
when I peer down a deep crevasse, my palms get sweaty and my knees go
weak. So, despite its inherent implausibility, this suspenseful
excursion into mountain-climbing had my heart pounding - but it was
more my acrophobia than the cliffhanger by writers Robert King and
Terry Hayes and director Martin Campbell ("The Mask of
Zorro"). Lifting liberally from "K2," "Wages of Fear" and the IMAX
film "Everest," the story begins with high drama on a cliff in Moab,
Utah, where Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell) and sister Annie (Robin
Tunney) survive a rock-climbing accident that costs the life of their
father (Stuart Wilson). Flash forward several years: Peter has traded
his carabiners for cameras, photographing snow leopards in the
Himalayas for National Geographic, while Annie, now a hotshot
mountaineer, has joined with another expert (Nicholas Lea) to lead
Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton), a millionaire entrepreneur - think
Richard Branson, to the summit of the world's second highest peak, a
commercial stunt perfectly timed coincide with a fly-over of a plane
from his new airline. But when they're trapped in a cavern by an
avalanche with just 36 hours to live, Peter assembles his own motley
team, led by a Jeremiah Johnson-like recluse (Scott Glenn), to lug
canisters of nitroglycerin up to blast through and rescue them.
The outdoor scenes are quite realistic and cinematically spectacular, but the stereotypical characterizations are mundane and mediocre. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Vertical Limit" is a dizzying 6. The title refers to the high, oxygen-deprived altitude of 26,000 feet above sea level, where the human body cannot survive for long.
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