VERTICAL LIMIT
Released: December 8, 2000
Chris O'Donnell as a professional mountain climber? It was stretching credibility even when he donned the Robin costume, but hey, let's put preconceptions on hold and look at it objectively... OK, we've had some laughable mountain movies in the past (anyone recall Clint Eastwood's "The Eiger Sanction" from 1975?) but I can safely say that Sylvester Stallone in Renny Harlin's "Cliffhanger" looks like an Oscar winning classic compared to this lifeless slug of an action movie. There is more tenseness is the opening of "Mission: Impossible II" than this. A mushy barrel of otherwise forgettable B-actors fills the rest of this movie with cheesey one-liners and fake sincerity such as Robin Tunney and the otherwise fine Bill "Titanic" Paxton. Scott Glenn adds a sense of quality acting but can't go far in a script like this. A funny line regarding the female French Canadian mountain climbing character helped make it a fractionally less tiring movie experience.
134 Minutes
Columbia/Sony