Fresh off the double home runs of revitalizing Zorro and James Bond for a new generation, director Martin Campbell took his blank check and made… Vertical Limit. A survival action flick for the new millennium, with a cast that just screams 2000, it’s not exactly a film that garners much praise (either then or now), nostalgia, or much thought at all — yet, maybe this time capsule of pre-superhero aughts blockbusters should.
That said, Vertical Limit is certainly no Cliffhanger, despite an opening that seems to be doing its best to draw comparisons. The Monument Valley-set start introduces us to the Garret siblings Peter (Chris O’Donnell) and Annie (Robin Tunney), their father, and also the not-aged-very-at-all CGI that’ll be peppered throughout the runtime; soon a rock-climbing accident thrusts an impossible choice upon the family, forcing Peter to cut his dad’s rope to prevent all from being pulled off the cliff face. It’s a tense crash course in Vertical Limit’s drama, stunts, and effects work that encapsulate all the strengths and weaknesses of the film.
The remaining two hours or so of mountaineering outrageousness unfolds three years later, upon the ice and crags of K2. Still scarred by that terrible day, Peter has given up climbing and become a National Geographic photographer, a job that leads to an uncomfortable reunion with Annie on the mountain. Now a climber on the team of cocky billionaire Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton), she’ll be part of the entrepreneur’s daring ascent to the summit. Neither the warnings of bad weather on the horizon nor from Scott Glenn’s grieving vengeful climbing legend Wick can stop Vaughn’s foolhardy expedition; only the inevitable disaster can accomplish that, leaving Annie, Vaughn, and their climb director trapped in a crevasse.
What follows is a Man-Versus-Nature adventure entirely distilled to Campbell’s set-piece prowess and extremely circa-2000 visual effects. With Peter, Wick, and other climbers (rounding out a stacked cast including Alexander Siddig and Ben Mendelsohn) embarking on a rescue mission, Vertical Limit unexpectedly becomes a vertical riff on William Friedkin’s nerve-wracking Sorcerer. The characters must carry volatile containers of nitro-glycerine while racing up the K2’s deadliest routes in order to blast open the sealed crevasse, yet really it’s so Campbell can assemble a rollercoaster of explosive mountaineering action scenes. Under the director’s eye, K2 is not merely another peak to climb, but a death-mountain thrill-ride of perpetually escalating danger and explosion-induced avalanches.
Campbell has always been a master at punchy, kinetic, taut action and he treats the mountain as a thrill-a-minute playground. Rarely a few minutes go by before a new threat reads its head – aka oh no the sun can ignite the nitro-glycerine – or another character is hanging over harrowing drops. Swooping camerawork following slides over cliff edges, wide shots capturing ice shelves collapsing under climbers, fingertip-dangling close calls as avalanches roar across the screen, and races against time to prevent or evade another explosion: it’s those constant sequences of mountain menace that make the film a cheesy adrenaline rush.
Regardless of how much the film tries to make the audience care, the characters never rise above cliché and archetypes, although Scott Glenn is utterly committed to Wick’s emotion in seeking revenge against Paxton for the death of his wife. Vertical Limit may be constructed wholly from contrivances and man-vs-nature film cliches, but the fun cast, absurdly over-the-top mountain dangers, and relentless well-executed set-pieces mean the film is never boring. $75 million worth of cheesy epic survival adventure: it’s only been 23 years but they really don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
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