If I had to choose one word to describe “Man on a Ledge,” the new heist drama starring Sam Worthington and Jamie Bell, it wouldn’t be thrilling or even breathtaking. No the word that best sums up the movie is implausible. Your enjoyment of the film will depend on how often you are willing to suspend your disbelief.
Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, a former cop sentenced to twenty-five years at Sing Sing prison for a diamond heist he may or may not have committed. After a daring escape he launches an elaborate plan to prove his innocence. Step one is perching himself on the ledge of the twenty-first floor of a Manhattan hotel. From that vantage point he orchestrates a “Mission: Impossible” style scheme to uncover the plot that sent him up the river.
“Man on a Ledge” is not what Hitchcock called a Refrigerator Movie. That is, one that seems to make sense while you’re watching it, but later, when you’re at home in front of the fridge thinking about it, the inanity of it becomes clear. Nope, this one is loud and proud in its complete lack of logic.
Plot wise so many things don’t add up that according to this movie’s way of thinking one plus one must equal five. But, as I said earlier, if you can suspend disbelief and go along for the ride “Man on a Ledge” proves not to be a bad movie, just a silly one.
Stereotypes abound—there’s the ruthless reporter who knows that jumpers are good for ratings, the troubled cop, the coldblooded businessman—and an overly elaborate plan that plays itself out just a little too easily. Add to that a bit too much talk about “how far you would go to clear your name” and one scene of completely gratuitous almost nudity and you end up with a poorly plotted time waster that skates by on the strength of its characters.
Terminator: Salvation is the fourth film in the famous franchise, following the first two classic installments and one not-so-classic episode. It is the movie set that gave us the famous tape of Christian Bale bawling out a hapless crew member with language far too colorful to use here and, confusingly, it is also both a sequel and a prequel to the previous movies. Directed by McG (yup, that’s the name his parents call him) it is a bigger, louder version of the Terminator tale, and the first film in the series to receive the PG-13 certificate in the United States, but is it the best of the bunch?
Set post Judgment Day, in the year 2018, a nuclear holocaust triggered by the artificial intelligence network Skynet, has destroyed most of the world. A band of survivors called the Resistance and led by John Connor (Christian Bale) struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job. When a stranger from the past named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) appears Connor’s confidence that Skynet can be beaten and the world saved is shaken.
Like the recent Star Trek reboot Terminator: Salvation respectfully pays homage to its roots. Listen for an “I’ll be back” riff, a snippet of Guns and Roses and there’s even a computer generated cameo by a bodybuilder you may have heard of, but unlike Star Trek, which succeeded because it melded story with cool action, Terminator Salvation tries to win over the audience with bombast.
It looks really cool, with excellently realized Terminator machines and a wild and desolate post apocalyptic landscape but director McG is a little too in love with the style of the film—the look of flames set against the film’s grey and beige desaturated color palate and wild camera moves—and not in love enough with the other stuff—plot for instance.
There is a story but it gets lost in the din of the overwhelming sound design, massive CGI and explosions! Explosions! Explosions! McG never met a building, car or machine he didn’t want to ignite and blow to bits, so every few minutes a blazing mushroom cloud of flames lights up the screen and burns out our retinas.
When he tries though, he can stage an action scene. Near the beginning he uses flashy camera moves—the kind that make David Fincher look restrained—as he has a camera swoop from the sky into a helicopter that is spiraling out of control. It’s a wild shot, but for all the style there isn’t one image here as memorable as Arnold’s entrance in the original film or Robert Patrick’s shattered Terminator reassembling himself in T2.
James Cameron guided the Terminator franchise to greatness with the first two movies, but without his leadership it has floundered. It’s a shame because Salvation had the chance to be a great sci fi film, but it’s been dumbed down to one long action flick. It’s fun enough, I suppose, but it’s not up to the standards of the first two films in the series. I guess the next science fiction big screen event to pin our hopes on will be James Cameron’s next film Avatar.
If I had to choose one word to describe “Man on a Ledge,” the new heist drama starring Sam Worthington and Jamie Bell, it wouldn’t be thrilling or even breathtaking. No the word that best sums up the movie is implausible. Your enjoyment of the film will depend on how often you are willing to suspend your disbelief.
