Film: Man on a Ledge
Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Ed Harris, Anthony Mackie, Jamie Bell, and Genesis Rodriguez
Directed By: Asger Leth
Written By: Pablo Fenjves
Produced By: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 102 minutes
Budget: $42,000,000
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Release Date: January 27, 2012
An early contender for 2012’s Most Accurate Movie Title, Man on a Ledge stars Avatar’s Sam Worthington, sporting the same suspiciously Australian-sounding American accent and an even more suspicious mullet haircut, as a… man on a ledge. The edge-walking guy in question is Nick Cassidy, who checks into a swank Manhattan hotel under an assumed name and promptly strands himself on the ledge outside his upper-floor window. Nick, a disgraced cop on the run after escaping from custody, seems ready to end it all in front of a large crowd of characteristically sympathetic New Yorkers who have gathered to encourage him to jump. When the police go into crisis mode, he demands the services of police negotiator Lydia Spencer (Elizabeth Banks, The Next Three Days), herself in disgrace after an earlier botched attempt to talk a former cop off the ledge.
As you might imagine, since the movie has 102 minutes to fill, Nick’s stunt isn’t merely a cry for help, but part of an elaborate plan. The hotel Nick is stranded outside happens to be located across the street from the offices of business mogul David Englander (Ed Harris) – the man whose diamond Nick allegedly stole during a moonlighting gig as hired muscle. Factor in Nick’s not-as-dopey-as-he-appears brother, Joey (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot) and his girlfriend, Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), plus a roster of corrupt cops, and the true goal of Nick’s stunt begins to take shape as the plot unfolds.
If you’re enough of a movie buff to notice their release patterns, you’ll note that January is typically a wasteland for new releases. The can’t-miss blockbusters are slated for the spring and summer months and the late-year push for Oscar-bait fare is behind us. That leaves January as a time for studios to unload duds collecting dust in the vaults and oddball projects that might have a chance to click with the right audience. Man on a Ledge is certainly more of the former than the latter, the kind of sleazy middle-brow thriller that’s just smart in the stupidest, most contrived way possible.
Miscast nearly from top to bottom—look, no one saw Avatar because they heard how good Worthington was in it—Ledge casts the typically appealing Banks in a weathered cop role, a phoned-in Harris in a mustache-twirling evil mogul role, and Kyra Sedgwick (“The Closer”) as an opportunistic reporter whose character is underwritten to the point of non-existence. Ledge is the kind of thriller that relies on hoary heist film clichés to work: Crawling through ventilation shafts? A diamond heist? That hasn’t worked since, what, The Great Muppet Caper?
Such boneheaded decisions are indicative of the film as a whole: brainless, and made all-the-stranger for it because it tries so hard to convince the viewer otherwise. There is something intriguing about the initial premise, and when Nick steps out on that narrow, vertiginous half-step of concrete, there’s some genuine possibility as to where his obviously fake suicide gambit is going to go. As the plot twists start to mount (it won’t surprise you that there’s a traitor in Nick’s life, nor will it surprise you who it turns out to be), any goodwill the unique premise generates is exhausted quickly. Man on a Ledge tries to compensate by upping the stakes and quickening the pace, and for a while this works, but eventually the plot holes and logical inconsistencies pile up. It’s not that the movie doesn’t try to sell its increasingly ludicrous turns, it’s more that those developments have exhausted the credulous viewer’s goodwill by the time Nick’s needlessly convoluted plan comes to fruition.
Man on a Ledge is certainly slick, and moderately clever enough to save it from being among the worst movies to try to spruce up a creaky heist-movie plot. You’ll forget Ledge as soon as the credits roll, an occasionally entertaining, mostly ridiculous thriller destined for regular rotation on a basic cable channel near you very soon.
Rating: 1.5 stars
