Vertical Limit (2000)

Directed by Martin Campbell. Starring Chris O’Donnell, Bill Paxton, Izabella Scorupco, Robin Tunney, Scott Glenn, Robert Taylor, Nicholas Lea, Ben Mendelsohn, Steve Le Marquand, Alexander Siddig, Temuera Morrison, Roshan Seth, David Hayman, Stuart Wilson. [PG-13]

Unscrupulous billionaire Paxton tries to conquer K2 but ends up stranded along with a couple of expert climbers/guides, one of whom is climber O’Donnell’s sister, so the young man organizes a rescue effort involving several other stouthearted souls…and a few canisters of nitroglycerin. Lots of great scenery, mostly seamless stunts and special effects, and a few white-knuckle moments—director Campbell has repeatedly proven he knows his way around an action scene—but the characterizations are hollow and predictable, and the script is appallingly stupid. Consider the grizzled, toeless mountaineer played by Glenn, whose appearance and existence within the story is such an absurd cliché that it veers into parody, and gets to utter ominous lines like, “The mountain owns him, he had to come back.” So formula-bound and dumb, in fact, that it makes the earlier mountain-high actioner, Cliffhanger, seem like the work of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. And speaking of Cliffhanger, the prologue clearly tries to recreate the tension and shock value of that film’s opening scene, but falls way short (spoiler alert?). Filmed in New Zealand, Queenstown and Mount Cook predominantly.

46/100