A month or so ago, Sony sent a 30-minute highlight reel of their upcoming film Vertical Limit to Rochester for critics to get a special sneak preview of the mountain climbing movie’s dazzling action sequences. Most of the scenes, especially the first, looked pretty good, so there was legitimate potential for Limit to entertain where similar films (like Cliffhanger and K2) succeeded solely in sucking.

They should have left well enough alone, as the additional 96 minutes that were left off Limit’s highlight reel are downright awful.  The more I learned about the characters, the more I hated them.  Ditto for the film’s story.  Perhaps it’s because there is an inherent problem with rooting for those who seek thrills by doing dumb things.  People who insist on partaking in death-defying activities, be they bungee jumping, mountain climbing, downhill skiing or masturbating with a kitchen knife while jumping on a trampoline, deserve to be hurt.  Badly.

Limit opens similarly to M:I-2, putting its star(s) on the face of a red rock mountain somewhere in the American southwest.  Instead of a stealthy spy with no equipment, Limit shows a family of three playing “Name That Tune” while they make their vertical ascent.  But something goes wrong, leaving father Royce Garrett (Stuart Wilson, Here on Earth) and his two adult children dangling from a rope meant to hold two people. Royce tells his son Peter (Chris O'Donnell, The Bachelor) to cut him loose, while daughter Annie (Robin Tunney, End of Days) pleads for her father to not sacrifice his life.  It’s a heart-in-your-throat scene that is well-executed and as dramatic as anything you’ll see in an action film.

Unfortunately, the potential for the rest of Limit drops faster than Royce. Flash forward three years, where Peter has sworn off the mountain in favor of a photography career for National Geographic and his estranged sister Annie has become one of the world’s top climbers.  The siblings haven’t spoken since the accident but somehow end up in the same place – at the base of Earth’s second-largest peak (called “K2”).  Peter is there to film Himalayan snow leopards, while Annie is involved in a climb with a crackpot billionaire (Bill Paxton, U-571) who plans on using the ascent to promote his new airline company.

And, wouldn’t you know it, Annie’s group is trapped in a crevasse near the peak of K2, and Peter has a limited amount of time to rescue his sister before the cold and high altitudes finish her off.  For a climbing mate, Peter chooses the wacky, wizard-like Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn, The Virgin Suicides), who lost his wife on the same mountain during a climb sponsored by the same billionaire some four years earlier.

Limit is poorly paced, just like director Martin Campbell’s last effort, The Mask of Zorro.  The scenes filmed outside look fantastic, thanks to the keen eye of cinematographer David Tattersall (The Green Mile), but Limit also features scenes filmed on hokey, ice-covered sets that have "sound stage" written all over them (not literally, but they may as well have). The transition from the lovely outdoors (filmed on and around New Zealand’s Mt. Cook) to the pretend outdoors looks awful and, at times, is laughable.  Conversely, Limit’s jokes and one-liners are anything but.

2:06 –

for intense life/death situations and brief strong language