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Edge of Inanity

A man checks in to a room on the 21st floor of a Manhattan hotel. He orders an expensive breakfast, opens the window, and gets out onto the ledge. Who is he? Why is he doing this? Is he going to jump? Well, if you're the filmmakers behind the aptly-named "Man on a Ledge", you're hoping that those questions are enough to keep an audience in suspense for 102 minutes.

Obviously, there's a bit more going on in the film than it would seem from that setup. What if I told you the titular man (played by Avatar himself, Sam Worthington, with that pesky Aussie accent popping up even more than usual) recently escaped from Sing Sing prison? And what if I told you he was wrongfully accused of stealing a huge diamond from a real estate tycoon who happens to own the hotel and the jewelry vault across from it?

Think you could write the rest of the film? You probably could. And, worse, you'd probably be right about most of it. Which puts you, and most of the audience, a few steps ahead of Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks, trying her best to sell this), the beleaguered negotiator assigned to talk Mr. Worthington down. She, like the film, gets mixed results. And as she unravels the true reason for his desperate actions, the script - by Pablo F. Fenjves - pushes believability right off the edge.

If nothing else, the film is bound to hold a coveted spot on the must-not-see list for acrophobes. Director Asger Leth, making his feature debut, does a great job with "how did they do that?" location shots. And to the film's credit, Mr. Worthington really does seem to be palm-sweatingly high up - even if he's sometimes too cavalier about it.

There's nothing wrong with a one-trick premise like "Man on a Ledge" - I was a mild fan of both "Phone Booth" and "Buried", both of which pulled off similar feats a bit more successfully. These films present a challenge for the screenwriters, who must keep their protagonists in a single location for the majority of the running time. In this case, Mr. Fenjves cooks up a twisty plot - involving a thoroughly unbelievable heist - that makes the ledge seem like the sanest place to be.