<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>Review for Vertical Limit (2000)</TITLE>
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="/ramr.css">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000">
<H1 ALIGN="CENTER" CLASS="title"><A HREF="/Title?0190865">Vertical Limit (2000)</A></H1><H3 ALIGN=CENTER>reviewed by<BR><A HREF="/ReviewsBy?Dennis+Schwartz">Dennis Schwartz</A></H3><HR WIDTH="40%" SIZE="4">
<P>VERTICAL LIMIT (director: Martin Campbell; screenwriters: Robert King
and Terry Hayes, based on a story by Mr. King; cinematographer: David
Tattersall; editor: Thom Noble; cast: Chris O'Donnell (Peter Garrett),
Bill Paxton (Elliot Vaughn), Robin Tunney (Annie Garrett), Scott Glenn
(Montgomery Wick), Izabella Scorupco (Monique Aubertine), Temuera
Morrison (Major Rasul), Nicholas Lea (Tom McLaren), Alexander Siddig
(Kareem), Steve Le Marquand (Cyril Bench), Ben Mendelsohn (Malcolm
Bench), Robert Taylor (Skip Taylor), Stuart Wilson (Royce Garrett),
Roshan Seth (Colonel Amir Salem); Runtime: 126; Columbia Pictures; 2000)</P>
<PRE>Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz</PRE>
<P>A superficial but entertaining roller-coaster-ride of nonstop action
featuring cliché characters and contrived dangerous situations, mainly
conceived to show off the special effects. The story is so slight that
there is no danger of it interfering with the action scenes. It's a
Hollywood blockbuster for those in need of escaping reality for two
hours and should prove to be enjoyable for those who are willing to go
with the flow of the action and suspend their critical judgment. The
reward will be a visual treat of well-executed stunts and a film that
had the glossy look of a National Geographic photography shoot. The
director Martin Campbell ("Goldeneye") relishes in filming excesses and
creating one life-and-death scene after the other. Movie viewers could
go snowblind just watching a series of mountain catastrophes befall the
adventurous climbers, as the film throws out almost any possible danger
there is to be found on a mountain and the mountain climbers  try to
overcome these impossible obstacles and, there is, needlessly to say, a
race-against-time sequence, with a last second rescue in the works.</P>
<P>The opening eight-minute scene, derivative as it is, is brilliantly done
and captures whatever underlying tension the film was to later on build
up to. The Garrett family is out for a pleasure mountain climbing trip
to the ochre cliffs of Monument Valley, as Peter (Chris O'Donnell) and
his sister Ann (Robin Tunney) are climbing with dad Royce (Stuart
Wilson) and a couple of unnamed companions. One of those companions
first has his backpack fall and thereby loosens the tow rope entangling
the others, trapping the family with the other two companions dangling
off a peak. The companions can't hold on and tragically fall. Royce
warns that the line won't hold all three for long and pleads that his
son cut him loose to have any hope of saving his children. Ignoring
Annie's tearful protests, Peter cuts the rope and the father falls to
his death.</P>
<P>It's three years later and Peter is a National Geographic photographer
shooting in the Himalayas. He ends up at a Pakistani military base,
where they are in the middle of a war with India. Nearby is a K2 base
camp, where Annie is a crew member on billionaire sportsman Elliot
Vaughn (Bill Paxton) team that is set to climb the dangerous summit of
K2--the world's second-highest peak. The brother and sister reunite
after becoming more distant with each other. They never discussed their
father's death since the tragedy, but have gone their separate ways.
Peter has abandoned mountain climbing, while Annie has become known as
the fastest climber in the world and is a Sports Illustrated cover girl.
She is still upset with what Peter did and could hardly face him, much
less talk to him about it.</P>
<P>At the richly put together base camp of Elliot's expedition, the
arrogant businessman has surrounded himself with the best team money can
buy, including the foremost climber in the world, Tom McLaren (Nicholas
Lea). He is to lead Elliot to the summit of K2 in time to coincide with
one of the planes flying overhead from Elliot's new airline he is
launching. The commercial motive for the climb and the callous way he
will soon treat his fellow climbers, makes him the film's designated
one-dimensional villain, and adds some more spice to a film that is
overspiced already with clichés.</P>
<P>Warned by the base camp of severe weather conditions, Elliot refuses the
leader's advice to turn back and manipulates the leader to go against
his better judgment and continue on, where they reach the vertical limit
at 26,000 feet--significant because the oxygen is very thin. When a wind
storm hits--and, Elliot, Annie and Tom end up inside a deep cavern that
becomes sealed by an avalanche, the three realize that they have only 36
hours to survive.</P>
<P>Peter impatiently arranges for the rescue attempt, quickly assembling a
diverse team of volunteers who have little chance of succeeding, but
sign on for the glory, or their concern for the victims, or for the
money offered. The Pakistani Army helps out by supplying the six
rescuers with cannisters of nitroglycerin, an homage to "Wages of Fear."
The rescuers will try to blast the victims out of the cavern, but must
be very careful when climbing because with just one spill of the
explosive liquid there is the certainty of a tremendous explosion. There
will be many tremendous explosions that rock the Himalayas, and -- if
mountains repeatedly exploding and climbers falling down mountain peaks
in colorful ways is your idea of enjoyment, then this is the film for
you.</P>
<P>The rescue crew includes one of the world's beautiful supermodels, who
in this film happens to be a medic and an expert climber Monique
(Izabella Scorupco); a Muslim practitioner, the Pakistani porter Kareem
(Alexander Siddig); the comically insane Aussie brothers Cyril and
Malcolm Bench (Steve Le Marquand, Ben Mendelsohn); and, the leader of
the crew, a hard-assed master mountain climber who became a hermit and
for the last few years stopped everything to search only for his wife
who never returned from Elliot's last tragic expedition to K2,
Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn). The craggy-faced Wick is bent on revenge
against Elliot, blaming him for his tour guide wife's death. He's also a
friend of Peter's father, and what goes for wisdom in this picture,
comes from his rugged lips.</P>
<P>The action keeps coming, the clichés get resolved somehow, and even
though the action sequences couldn't possibly be real, the great
photography and beautiful vistas made the locations seem out of this
world. The filmmaker used the Southern Alps in New Zealand as his
setting, and you could have fooled me, because it sure looked like the
Himalayas. It also looked like it could be a long commercial for
beautiful yuppie adventurers who are shooting an ad for Club Med, or a
National Geographic TV special, or even one of those action thrillers
that doesn't believe it needs good dialogue to tell its heroic fantasy
story.</P>
<PRE>REVIEWED ON 1/3/2001     GRADE: C+</PRE>
<P>Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"</P>
<PRE><A HREF="http://www.sover.net/~ozus">http://www.sover.net/~ozus</A></PRE>
<PRE><A HREF="mailto:ozus@sover.net">ozus@sover.net</A></PRE>
<P>© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED   DENNIS SCHWARTZ</P>
<HR><P CLASS=flush><SMALL>The review above was posted to the
<A HREF="news:rec.arts.movies.reviews">rec.arts.movies.reviews</A> newsgroup (<A HREF="news:de.rec.film.kritiken">de.rec.film.kritiken</A> for German reviews).<BR>
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.<BR>
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.<BR>
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.<BR>
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
</SMALL></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER>Related links: <A HREF="/Reviews/">index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews</A></P>



</P></BODY></HTML>
