…and yet this movie manages to plant its feet firmly in the middle of the road.
Dire-ector Martin Campbell (remember Goldeneye? The only movie whose VIDEO GAME had a better plot?) has achieved something with this movie that I never imagined possible. It’s a thriller with no thrills. Some ... Read review
The Mountain Will Decide. An emotionally-charged action-adventure tale of a retired ... more
climber (Chris O'‚´Donnell) who must launch a treacherous and extraordinary rescue effort up K2 the world'‚´s second highest peak to save his estranged sis...
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An edge-of-your-seat action adventure story, 'Vertical Limit' is the high-adrenaline tale ... more
of young climber Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell - Batman & Robin), who must launch a treacherous and extraordinary rescue effort up K2, the world's second hig...
K2, a 28,250-foot mountain in Pakistan's Karakoram Range, is the setting for this ... more
adrenaline-pumping action-adventure. It's a race against time when a retired mountain climber (Chris O'Donnell) leads a rescue mission to save his estranged sister (Robin Tunney) and other members of her team who have become trapped on K2 after a deadly avalanche.Martin Campbell, the celebrated director of The Mask Of Zorro and GoldenEye, delivers high-voltage action and exhilarating suspense in a film that pits man against his own limitations and the awesome power of nature's uncontrollable elements.
Give Hollywood a star cast, a towering, ice-gripped mountain and a cliché-ridden script ... more
and one thing is certain: somebody's going to get hurt. And while many critics believe the real casualties are those film goers who have shelled out for this cliff-hanging snow job, let's not overlook the work of scorer James Newton Howard whose solid efforts accounted for keeping the film's pace and action sequences on track. His score here alternates from the rhythmically ethno-exotic (most dangerous, ice-gripped mountains littered with dead and dying Hollywood characters being located in faraway locales) to the traditional Hollywood suspense and drama. Often using his typically seamless fusion of the symphonic and the synthetic, Howard's professional work here is solid and purposeful, as dynamically driven and diverse as the film is staid and predictable. --Jerry McCulley
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SPIDER-MANPeter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is an ordinary guy who lives with his beloved aunt ... more
and uncle and quietly pines for the girl next door, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). But when a genetically-modified 'super-spider' bites him while on a school trip, Peter develops unusual skills - fantastic acrobatic strength, supernatural awareness and a talent for web-spinning. It's not until tragedy strikes at home that Peter decides to use his new powers to fight crime under a secret identity: SPIDER-MAN! When the evil Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) attacks the good people of New York and endangers the life of Mary Jane, Peter commits himself to the ultimate tests: to thwart his arch-enemy and to win the heart of the girl that he loves.CHARLIE'S ANGELSCameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu are Charlie's Angels - a trio of elite private investigators who, with the latest in high-tech gadgets, martial arts techniques and a vast array of disguises, unleash their state of the art skills on land, sea and air. Their goal, to track down a kidnapped billionaire-to-be and keep his top-secret voice identification software out of lethal hands. Aided by their faithful Lieutenant Bosley (Bill Murray), and under the sure hand of their suave playboy boss, notorious for his clever ways of avoiding face-to-face meetings, the girls must foil an elaborate murder-revenge plot that could destroy individual privacy and corporate security worldwide. Adventure has never been more beautiful!VERTICAL LIMITAn edge-of-your-seat action adventure story, Vertical Limit is the high-adrenaline tale of young climber Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell), who must launch a treacherous and extraordinary rescue effort up K2, the world's second highest peak. Confronting both his own limitations and the awesome power of nature's uncontrollable elements, Peter risks his life to save his sister (Robin Tunney) and her summit team (Bill Paxton and Nicholas Lea) in a race against time.
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Advantages: Videos are easy to fast forward Disadvantages: Oh, where to begin...
…and yet this movie manages to plant its feet firmly in the middle of the road.
Dire-ector Martin Campbell (remember Goldeneye? The only movie whose VIDEO GAME had a better plot?) has achieved something with this movie that I never imagined possible. It’s a thriller with no thrills. Some movies are run of the mill and still manage to make you clench those bum cheeks on occasion. My cheeks could not have been looser. In fact I think ... ...Up their own arses.
***SPOILERS AHEAD (although really, it won’t ruin anything)***
Sadly, there is a plot, which I shall relate to you now. Chris O’Donnell (Batman and Dustbin, er, Robin that is) and Robin Tunney (End of Days, The Craft) are Peter and Annie - mountain climbers extraordinaire. One day, the disturbingly close siblings are up a very MI:2 style cliff with their daddy. Annie has not put enough clamps in ... more
…and yet this movie manages to plant its feet firmly in the middle of the road.
Dire-ector Martin Campbell (remember Goldeneye? The only movie whose VIDEO GAME had a better plot?) has achieved something with this movie that I never imagined possible. It’s a thriller with no thrills. Some movies are run of the mill and still manage to make you clench those bum cheeks on occasion. My cheeks could not have been looser. In fact I think that’s where the writers were as they wrote this tosh. Up their own arses.
***SPOILERS AHEAD (although really, it won’t ruin anything)***
Sadly, there is a plot, which I shall relate to you now. Chris O’Donnell (Batman and Dustbin, er, Robin that is) and Robin Tunney (End of Days, The Craft) are Peter and Annie - mountain climbers extraordinaire. One day, the disturbingly close siblings are up a very MI:2 style cliff with their daddy. Annie has not put enough clamps in the rock, and as such when the inevitable disaster strikes (one of the PROFESSIONAL CLIMBERS drops their rucksack), the family unit are left hanging by the unstable grip. Peter is forced to cut his dad free so they may live. What could have been a harrowing moment is ruined by seeing their father smash into the rocks below in full-screen gory, I mean glory. Eyes widen. Very sad.
Traipse forwards three years, and Petey-boy has never climbed again, deciding instead to follow a career photographing animals for National Geographic (the scene in which he snaps snow leopards is directed with all the flair of a mortally wounded giraffe standing at the camera, its death-throes knocking the camera around). For some reason, he finds out his sister is in the vicinity, and preparing to climb K2, the most naughty mountain in the world.
Why climb the naughty mountain? She just happens to be the best damn female climber in the world, that’s why! She’s going up with painfully obvious Richard Branson clone Elliott Vaughn - played by Bill Paxton (Twister, The Terminator). Vaughn is the owner of Majestic (whose logo is a screamingly obvious Virgin rip-off). Vaughn wants to take a load of people to the summit so they can wave at one of his new jets going overhead (though later he will poo-poo this public statement, saying it’s actually a “life goal”). However, there’s a 20% chance of a storm. “If I had odds like that in the oil business, I’d be a rich man!” crows the bearded one, and off they toddle. Well, blow me backwards and spank me with a Sunday supplement if a storm doesn’t come in. The experts say turn back, but the billionaire knows best, and one defiant “f**k you” to the mountain later, he gets stranded down a big hole with Annie and the expert. Never. Piss. Off. The. Mountain.
Petey-kins is understandably upset by this (he should be more upset about being in the Batman flick where Bats USES A GOD DAMN CREDIT CARD), and gets a few brave/greedy (some guy offers some money to those who come back, for some reason) souls to trek up the snowy rock face and get Annie back in time for tea and Kendall mint cake. Or before they die of pernicious oedema, nés pas. Being chums with the local Pakistani military, Peter-pants borrows some nitro (which can’t be jigged around, handy for a perilous mountain journey then?) so they don’t have to dig through any avalanches, and sets out. Along with a mysterious stranger with a score to settle. And two comedy Australians. At this point I contemplated that wrapping tin foil around my head and wandering the streets would be more fun, but that kid from Eastenders got there first, didn’t he?
So up they climb, with the inevitable nitro fumbling, and general stupidity. You can almost imagine the executive meeting at the rewrite of the story:
INT. HOLLYWOOD MEETING ROOM. DAY.
A bunch of fat cats movie guys sit round a table, ramming chunks of sushi down their overpaid gullets. One begins to speak, pieces of seaweed between his saliva-flecked gums.
Bigwig # 1 – “Okay, we got this f**kin’ mountain flick, right, like Cliffhanger okay? But the f**kin’ mook who wrote it didn’t include any bad guy? So how we gonna get some action outta some jerk climbin’ a f**kin’ big bit of rock?”
General murmurs from the room.
Bigwig # 2 (rising to his feet) – “I f**kin’ got it! And I don’t mean the runs from that goddamn sushi! They can’t be f**ked to dig sh*tty ice up, right? So they take a big pile of TNT with ‘em, and BOOM!”
Bigwig # 3 - “How they gonna light it you f**k? They ain’t gonna light no matches in a god damn storm!”
Bigwig # 32 – “Nitro”
Bigwig # 9 – “What he say?”
Bigwig # 2- “That’s it! That’s f**kin’ IT! Nitro glycerine! You can’t shake it around, so one of the putzes drops some down a cliff! And then they remember you can’t get it warm, having not been warned about such an event by the MILITARY ORGANISATION that stores it! And some gets into the sunlight and BOOM! More deaths, and real ones too, not just those pansy-ass ‘I’m falling!’ ones!”
The bigwigs all embrace and call in the actors, directors and writers to bow before them and perform fellatio for each of them before they greenlight the picture. Another happy day in Tinseltown.
FADE TO BLACK.
ANYWAY. When you find yourself going “oh come ON!” to the TV, you know you’re onto a dud. The direlogue, I mean *dialogue* is weedy and nonsensical, the plot was probably written on the back of someone’s hand for crisp’s sake, and the acting isn’t even THIRD rate. Chris O’Donnell is the Chris of death for the picture, and Robin Tunney has not lived up to the potential she showed in The Craft. The rest of the actors are like macaroni in a sandwich, stodgy and limp. Bill Paxton has used up the overenthusiastic shtick that he employs in *every* film he’s ever been in, and the comic relief is about as welcome as a sex-starved dwarf in a nunnery.
As for the so-called action, it’s all of the Jar Jar Binks variety. Someone (A PROFESSIONAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBER) puts down his backpack, which falls over and slides down the cliff. The nitro is in the pack, and somehow NOT SECURED. The PROFESSIONAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBER jumps after it and slides down the rock face. Nitro fall out of pack go boom. Someone has left the lid off the nitro case in the MILITARY COMPOUND. One explosion later and the MILITARY COMMANDER remembers to tell the mountaineers that nitro get warm go boom. They panic, and cover the packs in ice. Too late, pack go boom. There are about 2 other “nail biters”, which come off more like toenail clippings. About as tense as “The Waiting Game” with Ruby Wax.
The effects and stunts are not much better, with ALL the bits of action in the trailer. Really, if you’ve seen the trailer, all you need to know is that YES they do survive and NO the bad guy does not get away with it. Some glaringly obvious blue screen work is combined with the most “p*ss off!” stunt climbing since Bruce Willis grabbed onto that lift shaft WITH HIS FINGERTIPS in Die Hard. At least the rock climbing in MI:2 was real, a feat obviously not worth trying to copy here. It wears its budget on its sleeve, and I swear they use stock footage for the avalanches! Stock footage for the love of crumb cake! IS THIS THE GOD DAMN 1950’s?
But did you like the movie, Ben?
Take a guess. This will be ITV 1’s BIG MOVIE one day, and no-one will watch it. I will never reclaim the 2 (ish) hours I spent watching this insurmountable (geddit?) piece of ineptitude. It takes clay to form a bowl, but it is the things we put inside the bowl that defines its use. This is a bowl of sh*t. Avoid.
I knew I was not going to enjoy this film within the first five minutes of viewing. My wife let out a loud chuckle during what should have been a serious, intense moment, and that was it. Mrs Borg is quite adept at spotting cheesy storylines and spotted this one straight away.
Cheesy? There is less cheese on a cheeseburger than this. This is the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac Meal without the Big Mac. No substance, not point!
Chris O’Donnell, ... ...scripts than this, along with Bill Paxton. Why? I ask myself, oh why was this ever made? What other classic or epic could have been made other than this, with the money obviously available?
You can imagine the conversation between movie executives:
-Let’s make a movie up in the Himalayas, one of those action flicks to rival Cliffhanger and The Eiger Sanction.
-Hm, sounds great, we will get in some great writers and great actors. Will look ...
Borg 08.08.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Vertical Limit (DVD)
Advantages: Not a bad film with good camera work Disadvantages: Poor plot. Copycat ideas
...blames him. Now for Vertical Limit. Starts off with 3 members of a family, Father,Son and daughter, climbing on a rock face. The clamp fails and 3 are dangling. The Clamp remaining will not hold 3 so the son has to cut the father free to save his children. Falls 1000's of feet to his death. Gult eats the son (Chris O'donnell). Loses touch with his sister who slightly blames him. Spot the similarities? Although the film follows a plot of rescue like ... ...Cast. In Vertical limit, we have 3 underused but effective actors in Hollywood. Bill Paxton famous for his roles in Apollo 13, Aliens and Weird Science, returns as a multi millionaire climber intent on tackling the mountain. He plays the part of successful businessman well as we see both sides of his acumen on the mountain. Chris O'donnell is well known for his parts in films such as Batman and is kept as the main character here for his women-appeal. ...
andycharger 02.09.2002 (03.09.2002)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Vertical Limit (DVD)
Advantages: Pure action, no distraction Disadvantages: Less believable than MacDonalds' merchandising posters
...successful format to date and Vertical Limit is no exception.
I must firstly say that for me, this feature (or Cliffhanger with attitude) is a film containing more desperate rushing around than an incontinent ice-skater trying to find a toilet, more action than a sexually frustrated man on an island populated only by nymphomaniacs and more thrills than, well, you get my (snow) drift.
We focus on the lives of two siblings, Peter (Chris O’Donnell) ... ...blue background.
This aside, Vertical Limit is a truly fantastic action-adventure movie. It oozes adrenaline in all the right places (is that possible?), shocks and surprises with original and well-captured stunts and includes acting just good enough to keep the audience interested but not overshadow the all-important sub-zero set pieces.
The additional features for the film are excellent. More featurettes than you could shake a ski at, a very ...
stoolie74 30.07.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Vertical Limit (DVD)
Vertical limit is one of those films you will either love or not. I loved it! Yes despite my fear of heights, I really enjoyed this film. Okay some scenes did have me looking at the screen from my hands strategically placed over my eyes! The story open with five climbers on a ‘vertical’ mountain face! Three are related, namely Father, Son and daughter. As they climb their way to the peak, the unthinkable happens, the rope breaks free ... ...· Filmographies
· And full theatrical trailer.
Vertical limits is one of those films that I would watch again, which doesn’t often happen with me and films. The scenery is awesome, the acting is great, the special effects are excellent, and the storyline is believable. Well worth a watch. ...
dabmim 22.07.2001 (24.07.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Vertical Limit (DVD)
Advantages: Good all round entertainment Disadvantages: Cheesy and not so believable acting
The Plot
Genre: Action/Adventure/Thriller
This is an action adventure film and therefore, as with most, the story line is somewhat thin. The basis is that Peter and Annie are from a background of climbers and have been introduced to this hobby by their father. In an unfortunate turn of events they lose there father and both go their separate ways. In a publicity stunt a business man Elliot Vaughn played by Bill Paxton gathers together a summit ... ...team worries Peter somewhat as the team seem to be thinking carelessly about the weather and merely focusing on getting to the top.
Despite numerous weather warnings the summit team continue to climb K2 and Peter isn’t happy about this. He tries to get the base team to tell them to come back but they won’t. Then, in the eventuality that such an action film must have, the storm causes an avalanche which results in Annie and the summit team being ...
Jaynestep 08.11.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Vertical Limit (DVD)
The story of Peter Garrett, a young climber, who leads a rescue attempt up K2, the second highest peak in the world. He battles against all the elements and harsh conditions to try to save his sister and her team trapped at the summit.
Animated Menus, Trailer, Filmographies, Weblink, National Geographical Featurette, Seven Search And Rescue Featurettes, Making Of Featurette, Feature Length Commentary From The Director And Executive Producer
Aspect Ratio
1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1
Dubbing Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 English Hungarian
Professional reviews
Review
"...The physical feats are inspiring, crowd-pleasing testaments to the stupendous extremes of human capabilities..." (Box Office, p.63, 01/01/2001)
"...The best scenes give you a vicarious vertigo high..." (Entertainment Weekly, p.51, 05/01/2001)
"...The stunt work and David Tattersall's lensing catch moments of the adrenaline rush that is mountain climbing..." (Hollywood Reporter, p.14-39, 29/11/2000)
"The action scenes in VERTICAL LIMIT take cliffhanging to the highest peaks of excitement..." (USA Today, p.4E, 08/12/2000)
DVD Description
As action director Martin Campbell's heart-pumping thriller VERTICAL LIMIT begins, an eagle glides gracefully over the stunningly filmed mesas of Utah. Its shadow falls on a vertical rock face being climbed by Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell), his father (Stuart Wilson), and his sister Annie (Robin Tunney). Suddenly a backpack hurtles by, followed rapidly by two climbers whose ropes tear the male Garretts from the rock face. The excruciatingly tense sequence ends in tragedy. After this stunning opening, the action switches to the Himalayas, where tycoon Elliott Vaughn (Bill Paxton) has financed an expedition that will take him to the summit of K2--the world's second highest mountain. Annie is one of Elliott's party. In the face of a threatening storm, Elliott recklessly insists the climb should continue. The storm duly arrives and decimates the expedition, leaving Elliott and Annie stranded. Peter leads a group of climbers--including the grizzled Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn) and a French-Canadian nurse (Izabella Scorupco)--in a rescue attempt. Campbell, director of photography Derek Tattersall, many daring cameramen, mountain climbers, avalanche specialists, and special effects technicians, along with veteran editor Thom Noble, deliver a beautifully filmed mountaineering thriller with even more heart-stopping moments than JAWS.
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