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Vertical Limit.... |
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Movie: Vertical Limit
Direction: Martin Campbell.
Cast: Chris O'Donnell, Robin Tunney, Bill Paxton, Izabella
Scorupco and Scott Glenn.
Written: Robert King and Terry Hayes.
Produced: Lloyd Phillips, Robert King and Martin Campbell.
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"Vertical Limit" looks to scale some boxoffice
peaks as a sub-zero stunt showcase, though the story gets snowed under in the process.
After having to make a fatal decision during a family mountain-climbing excursion gone
awry, Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell) faces more tragedy upon learning that his overly
ambitious younger sister Annie (Robin Tunney) has gotten herself stranded with an
ineffectual guide (Nicholas Lea) and a megalomaniacal millionaire (Bill Paxton) at 26,000
feet in the Himalayas on K2, the world's second-highest and most challenging mountain.
Trapped in a subterranean ice cave at an unendurable altitude, Annie and her cohorts don't
stand a chance unless a crew is |
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willing to go on what is considered a suicide mission to
rescue them before their short time runs out. Motivated by equal parts
fraternal devotion and deep-seated guilt, Peter is the first to volunteer; a
$500,000 reward put up by the millionaire's father lures the rest of the formulaically
motley crew.
It's always problematic when more lives are risked than are trying to be saved--especially
when few of the lives on either side are particularly sympathetic or even likable. And
half a million bucks, particularly in the |
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new Regis economy, hardly seems like a good enough motivator
to rationalize sticking out one's neck when in all likelihood said neck will end up
broken, along with every bone, at the bottom of an icy crevasse. Heck, in his last film,
O'Donnell was vying for $100 million and all he had to do was marry Renee Zellweger!
Still, if the gang had decided it was indeed too dangerous a mission with too small a
payoff and opted instead to sit around base camp toasting marshmallows and sipping cocoa,
"Vertical Limit" would fail miserably to live up to either of its action or
thriller genre adjectives. So up and away they go, with spectacularly perilous |
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results. Whether they're hurtling from a helicopter or
dangling precariously from precipices, the rescuers themselves are in dire need of saving
as often as not. It doesn't help that they're all loaded down with containers of extremely
unstable liquid explosives with which they plan to blast through any blockages but which
they seem more inclined to spill copiously.
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The physical feats are inspiring, crowd-pleasing testaments
to the stupendous extremes of human capabilities, but to the purportedly experienced,
cocksure climber who carelessly tosses his knapsack down on a seriously steep incline and
then is shocked and horrified as it--and subsequently he--careens down the mountainside:
You deserve what you get. |
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