Man on a Ledge: Commit- ment to Characters

Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is an ex-cop facing 25 years in prison after his third appeal is denied. He maintains that he is innocent, but he’s not getting any traction through legal channels. So, time to do something about it. When his father dies, he is allowed a day out to go to the funeral. He disarms one of his guards and steals his brother’s truck. Nick narrowly escapes death and the cops in a quick but dangerous chase, and then he heads to the Roosevelt Hotel where he books a room on a floor in the twenties, has a very expensive breakfast, and steps out onto the ledge.

Nick doesn’t want to kill himself, but he will do it if he can’t prove his innocence. For some reason he says that the only negotiator he is going to talk to is Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). It is unclear why he needs to be on the ledge, why he needs Lydia Mercer, or why a myriad of other things happen in this film. There are so many loose ends in this thing that I lost count. But the weird bit is that I didn’t care. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole film despite the holes in the story. These holes are mysterious, but the story caries itself despite them. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe the writer is such a genius that he invented some weird new avant-garde way of making plot-holed blockbusters (unlikely). Or maybe the performances of the actors were good enough to carry a floppy story. This second option seems more probable, especially when you have Sam Worthington and Ed Burns in close quarters. And also, Elizabeth Banks, Genesis Rodriguez, and Jamie Bell knock their performances out of the park as well. And thus, we don’t care that Worthington’s accent keeps slipping, because there is real and deep emotion in him (perfectly done, as always, excluding Clash of the Titans, of course). And the boys vs. girls cop stuff between Detective Dougherty (Edward Burns) and Lydia keeps the pace from stalling out despite all the waiting that goes along with a jumper negotiation. And we’re too captivated by the adorable dynamic between Joey Cassidy (Jamie Bell) and his spicy Latin girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) to notice that we have no basis for buying that these two would be able to pull off a heist. We just doofily keep shoving the popcorn in.

But there’s something else with this movie. The pacing is extremely slow for an action heist thriller, but it fits really well here anyway. I was surprised at how well this film held me considering its slowness. Also, there is a heist in this thing, but the heist is not the main focus. There is minimal attention paid to it in comparison with all the other heist films that have come out in the last decade or two. This is an interesting choice and this style harkens back to films from the 60s and 70s. It wasn’t all flash and logistics back then, it was more character driven, and that is exactly what we have here.

So I guess that is the big secret to this movie—character—because it’s good, and it’s hard to make a good Saturday night movie. Apparently, if you have a bunch of compelling characters, an audience will forgive plot holes, pacing oddities, the works.

Man on a Ledge. It’s definitely a weirdy. It combines a prison break, a heist, and an innocent man framed; but none of the details of those things are what is focused on. Instead, we focus on the man and those around him. We see how he affects people he doesn’t know. It’s character, character, character.

This is a good flick that is worth going to the theaters for, even if Ed Harris comes off a little bit (or a lot) like a Disney villain. Honestly, I blame the editors for that one because Harris is far too talented to have come off so “meh”. But the other actors pick up the slack, and it’s an exciting, action packed story with a mature edge to it. That is to say, not everything is explosions and gimmicks in this thing, and I am thankful for that as well.