Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/1/12
“All you of Earth
are idiots!”-Eros (Dudley Manlove) in Plan 9 from Outer Space
I try
not to read any full-length reviews of movies I’m going to write about
before I’ve done my own review. But it’s impossible for my curious
brain not to peek at Rotten Tomatoes.com and its gradually building critical
consensus on the week’s new movies. Obviously, RT has a bias clearly
revealed in its’ name (a movie receiving 59% positive reviews is still
stamped “Rotten”), but I’m still always hoping to see that little fresh
tomato hover over the films I plan to see. Not that a splat means
I’m not going to have a good time: even a casual perusal of this
site will tell you that I can be a contrarian, and I’m notoriously easy
to please within my favorite genres. But one has to be concerned
when critical condemnation is as universal as for the new Summit release
Man on a Ledge, and the mostly scathing reviews sent me in with
tempered expectations despite a strong trailer and a great cast.
Funny thing is, the Man on a Ledge I saw isn’t just better than
advertised: it’s a near-perfect popcorn creation filled with skillfully-sketched,
wonderfully-played characters going through the paces of the first feature
screenplay by veteran TV movie writer Pablo F. Fenjves (who had a previous,
far less desirable brush with fame as a witness in the O.J. Simpson trial).
Man on a Ledge is filled with lucky breaks, split-second escapes
and astonishing feats of courage, but to those who dismiss it as “preposterous”,
I’d ask who makes a movie about the guys who just barely get HIT by a train?
I loved Man on a Ledge to pieces, and I strongly suggest you shrug
off the naysayers and give it a try.
Nick
Cassidy (Sam Worthington) checks into a ritzy New York hotel, eats a good
last meal and climbs out on the ledge, ready to jump. Flashbacks
reveal to us that this ex-cop was incarcerated for a crime he insists he
didn’t commit: stealing a 40-million-dollar diamond from real estate
tycoon David Englander (Ed Harris), for whom he was moonlighting on security.
Released to attend his father’s funeral, he escaped and now stands on this
ledge, where negotiator Jack Dougherty (Ed Burns) is first on the scene.
But Nick demands a different person to talk to, and he has a specific one
in mind: if Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) isn’t there to talk him
down within 30 minutes, he’ll jump. Mercer is reviled on the force
for her failure to talk a fellow officer down off a bridge, but she drags
herself out of bed and shows up in time. The thing is, as she talks
to Nick, the officers working behind her find that the hotel room has no
fingerprints, and the name he checked in under matches a dead police officer.
Lydia can tell he’s desperate but doesn’t want to jump, and she’s right.
All this is a distraction from what’s going on across the street, where
Englander’s corporate headquarters is being broken into by Nick’s brother
Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez). As
the investigative noose tightens, it becomes more and more certain that
this day will end with Nick either acquitted or dead.
Man
on a Ledge’s stew is filled with reliable ingredients:
an innocent man wrongfully imprisoned, a good cop who needs to redeem herself
for a past mistake, a diabolical billionaire, backstabbing traitors hidden
in plain sight and a loyal family who’ll risk anything to help each other
out. And the great cast director Asger Leth has assembled makes these
archetypes sing. Worthington, who’s taken it hard in those inexplicable
reviews I referenced earlier, is effectively desperate and holds the screen
nicely in a lead role that mostly demands he stay in one place. Banks’
Everywoman appeal is perfect for the cop who’s gone twelve rounds with
life but still has the guts to make a judgment call and stick with it.
I don’t know that Bell’s frumpy Little Brother casualness has ever been
put to better use. Burns does a great job playing Dougherty as a
professional who cares about getting the guy off the ledge more than Departmental
politics. And Anthony Mackie and Titus Welliver do a solid job of
pitching their suspicious officers such that we can’t be sure whether they’re
on Englander’s payroll or not.
I have
to give special notice to two performers who really stood out. Harris
is an underused resource, but the guy always brings it, and here he knows
exactly what Englander’s job is in this plot (to make the audience boo,
hiss and possibly throw things at the screen whenever he’s around), and
MAN does he ever ooze entitled evil. When the closing scenes set
things up to suggest that he just might get away with it, the thought is
utterly unbearable as Harris spikes the football on every victory, rubs
salt in every wound and delights in the suffering of all who dare oppose
him. He’s not on screen that much, but the movie wouldn’t work nearly
as well without his committed performance. So too are the proceedings
elevated by the feature debut of telenovela star Rodriguez, who takes a
better-than-usual Girlfriend part and makes it sing with her fun, feisty
and vulnerable performance. Ledge works a full story arc for
a lest a half-dozen characters, and the way Angie earns her spot in the
Cassidy family by seeing this mad plan through is among the best.
And I absolutely loved the way she and Bell play their parts so we can
see how their romantic banter is a patch over their fear that they’re in
over their heads. Of course, I was really impressed by everything
about Rodriguez’s work here: it’s cinematic love at first sight (don’t
worry, Genesis, I’m talking about the “instant fan” sort of love, not the
“you’ll find my van parked across the street at odd hours” kind).
Leth
knows how to stage an action sequence, and Nick’s spectacularly close call
of an escape from the funeral is a real nail-biter, as are a couple of
Joey and Angie’s misadventures at jewel thievery. But the movie’s
most exciting moment, likely to stand up as one of the most exciting of
the year, comes near the end when one of our heroes is forced to go far,
far above and beyond the call to try and stop Englander and I noted with
admiration how Fenjves had planted not one but TWO setups in the dialog
that made it equally possible that the movie was laying the groundwork
for total success or heroic sacrifice. So even those skilled at decoding
a script as it unfolds can’t really know which of two glaring possibilities
will play out until the scene finishes its business. While the climactic
action takes several twists and turns, the movie never loses track of its
through-line: we’re here to get Nick off that building and catch
Englander with the goods.
In
just 100 minutes, the filmmakers find time for lots of other fully-realized
fun stuff, like William Sadler as a helpful hotel employee, Kyra Sedgwick
as the oh-so-not Hispanic reporter Suzie Morales, and Michael Lee Lawrence
in a wonderful turn as the Man on the Street whose frustration with the
world turns to Nick Cassidy hero worship as the adventure plays out (his
last line is pure gold).
Man
on a Ledge is a stripped-down B movie machine with an A-movie cast
that covers an astonishing amount of ground in a very short period without
missing any beats. It’s also another in a recent run of very strong
old-school originals from Summit, which has spent their Twilight money
financing such great movies I can’t begrudge them a single penny of their
inexplicable success (hopefully this continues under their new Lionsgate
ownership). And to the presumably large number of people who think
it’s a piece of crap, we will have to agree to disagree COUGHYOU’REIDIOTSCOUGH. |
