REVIEW: Man on a Ledge : Crimson Monkey

REVIEW: Man on a Ledge

Saturday, January 21 2012 - Reviews - by: jared_cm

I’ve been struggling with what to say about Man on a Ledge. I suppose it’s fitting, because it kind of felt like the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to say about Man on a Ledge either. It’s a completely ridiculous movie, but it takes it self far too seriously most of the time so you can’t tell if it’s supposed to be tongue in cheek or not. I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but when your entire premise hinges both on being able to open a hotel window wide enough to climb out of it (which I haven’t seen at a hotel in at least the past 10 years) and Sam Worthington being a good enough actor to carry a movie, you’ve got some trouble.

As the title suggests, most of the film focuses on a man, Nick Cassidy (Worthington), standing on the ledge of a building. Cassidy is an ex-cop who has been in jail for a few years for allegedly stealing some sort of diamond from real estate giant David Englander (played by a zombie-looking Ed Harris). Cassidy manages to escape during his father’s funeral and ends up in a hotel in Manhattan, where he climbs out on the ledge, seemingly because he has nothing left to live for. The twist is that the diamond was never stolen, and Cassidy is just the diversion while his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), who area apparently expert cat burglars, break into Englander’s office across the street to actually steal the diamond for real to prove Nick’s innocence. Before you get on me about spoiling the ‘twist,’ it’s in the trailers and really if you’re paying even half attention to the first 15 minutes of the film you can tell exactly where the rest of it is going to go.

Now, the premise isn’t a bad one. It’s a little ridiculous, but I like a good heist and the whole diversion angle is interesting. Unfortunately, the characters are so one dimensional that to eat up time they just keep beating you over the head with their one flaw or that bit of information that you’re supposed to be figuring out on your own but just in case you can’t they’re going to help. For example, Elizabeth Banks plays Lydia Mercer, who’s a police negotiator called in to talk Cassidy down off the ledge. She apparently recently had a call where she lost someone off a bridge that had been widely publicized, so everyone is giving her crap about it. This would work if they just stopped there, but in an attempt at gaining (I guess) some sort of chemistry of the characters, her partner is constantly just belaboring the point while she’s constantly being so ‘edgy.’

Stuff like that isn’t even the biggest problem, it’s just lazy writing. The problem is the completely inconsistent mood. Some moments are so serious that you just can’t help but laugh at because of how ridiculous the previous moment was. The prime example of this is the madcap team of boyfriend and girlfriend cat burglars. We’re never told that they have any history being cat burglars, or even stealing anything at all (aside from Angie who admits to stealing clothes as a kid), and yet at one point Nick says through his concealed radio: “just like we practiced.” How exactly has he been practicing anything with anyone while he’s been in jail for 2 years? The pair are expert thieves in the same way that Hudson Hawk is a master thief: not really all that good, and constantly wisecracking. You can’t cut from these guys telling jokes every other line directly to a heart-felt moment where Nick is spilling what really happened when he was framed and how he sat in jail for 2 years planning a way to clear his name and expect anyone to be on the same page. There’s also the crowd below that perhaps the filmmakers thought would make some sort of comment on how jaded our culture is (people screaming “I hope he jumps!”) and an over-the-top reporter that maybe was supposed to be a comment on how jaded our media is, but it all comes off so jokey and got some pretty big laughs from the crowd in the theater, so how does this fit in to the rest of the film?

Back to the suspension of disbelief thing, by the end of the film they’re just asking far to much of you. By the time Cassidy has the diamond and does prove that Englander had it all along (oh sorry, spoiler), he just walks away from the entire thing scott-free. Seriously? He and his family have caused how much damage breaking into a very powerful man’s personal vault, not to mention all the mess they caused with getting all the police out there to respond to a ‘jumper,’ and they just laugh it off? I’m sorry, it’s just so hilariously wrong. You half expect it to just freeze frame at the end with everybody laughing like it was the end of some cheeseball TV show.

I can’t recommend seeing this movie for anything more than some MST3K-style laughing at it. Maybe when it hits the dollar theaters, go check it out for a laugh. It’s disappointing because like I said, I love a god heist, and it’s got potential to be really interesting, but it just never gets the mood right and you don’t really know what they’re trying to do. Plus, there’s actually a scene where someone has to cut a red wire to avoid an alarm. When was the last time you saw a ‘cut the red wire’ scene in a film that wasn’t a joke or Die Hard with a Vengeance (note: I love Die Hard with a Vengeance, the point is that it was a while ago)? The movie is reaching, and it never quite catches whatever it is it’s reaching for.