Vertical Limit

Annie Garrett (Robin Tunney) is part of an expedition aiming for the summit of K2, the second highest peak in the world. The ascent seems to be going fine, but the team is failing to receive storm warnings and is thus ignorant of the danger awaiting it. Eventually an avalanche strikes, and Annie is left stranded, trapped in a crevasse with millionaire expedition leader Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton). Annie's brother Peter (Chris O'Donnell) then launches a rescue mission, gathering together a team of dedicated mountaineers - including Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn), a climber whose wife was lost in Wick's previous expedition - as he races to save his sister from certain death.
Vertical Limit is the film for all those mountain-climbing aficionados who devoured Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and similar books. It attempts to translate man-against-the-mountain adventure into compelling, albeit fictional, drama. But while the climbing action is pretty darn breathtaking, somebody forgot to put the brakes on the cliché machine while penning the screenplay. Two siblings (Chris O'Donnell and Robin Tunney) are mentally scarred by a climbing accident in which their father died to save them. She becomes a famous mountain climber; he never climbs again. On one of her climbs an avalanche leaves her stranded and only her determined brother can bring her back, along with a ragtag team of rescuers. It's easy to pick out the rest of the story from here, but Vertical Limit is less about the hackneyed plot than it is about putting its characters into increasingly dangerous situations and hanging them precariously over various mountainsides. It's a credit to director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye) that the impressive action keeps the film moving along past the bordering-on-absurd plot twists. O'Donnell tosses his mane of fluffy hair admirably, but it's still disheartening to see this once-promising actor turning into a pretty-boy stand-in; only Glenn manages to overcome his character's predictability. Mountaineering enthusiasts will recognise a cameo by world-renowned climber Ed Viesturs, who as an actor proves that he's. a very good mountain climber. --Mark Englehart,

Special Features

Bonus Footage, Commentary: Martin Campbell and Marcia Nasatir., Documentaries: 'Surviving the Limit', Quest for K2' and 7 other featurettes., DVDRom Features, Filmographies, Trailers

Actors: Roshan Seth, Robin Tunney, Temuera Morrison, Izabella Scorupco, Nicholas Lea, Steve Le Marquand, Augie Davis, Ben Mendelsohn, Stuart Wilson, Chris O'Donnell, Bill Paxton, Scott Glenn

Audio Languages: English, Hungarian

Duration: 119 minutes

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitle Languages: English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Dutch, Bulgarian, Hindi, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic

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