Movie Review and News

Movie review: ‘Man on a Ledge’ takes a long leap of logic – Visalia Times-Delta

The most annoying thing about the heist thriller “Man on a Ledge” is the way the plot doesn’t play fair with the audience.

In Choices’ effort to provide spoiler-free reviews, we’ll not reveal the nonsensical plot twists here, but if you spend any amount of time thinking about the movie, it quickly falls apart.

Worse, director Asger Leth and writer Pablo F. Fenjves use silly plot twists and have characters do things that are deliberately meant to confuse the audience.

These twists aren’t remotely clever, though. Rather the twists are cheats that insult the intelligence of the audience. And there’s nothing worse than a movie that insults the intelligence of its audience.

Another problem with the movie: Star Sam Worthington’s performance. He’s bland here — just like he was bland in “Clash of the Titans,” “Terminator Salvation” and “Avatar.” There’s just something uninspired by his screen presence. He doesn’t have the physical heft to be an effective action hero and he’s also not charming.

Worthington plays New York City cop Nick Cassidy, who is convicted of stealing a diamond worth hundreds of millions owned by Wall Street tycoon David Englander (Ed Harris, who goes over the top playing the character as greedy, growling monster).

As the movie opens, Nick escapes from prison, checks into the 20th floor of a swanky hotel and then crawls out on a ledge.

Soon, the New York City Police Department is on scene — including two negotiators (Elizabeth Banks and Ed Burns) who apparently are slow on current events because they don’t recognize Cassidy, an escaped convict who is a former police officer, mind you.

At the same time Cassidy is hanging out on the ledge and threatening to take a swan dive, Cassidy’s little brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are breaking into the tycoon’s high-security office to gather evidence that Nick is innocent.

That leads to one ludicrous scene after another in which Joey and Angie morph into gravity defying, expert cat burglars. The filmmakers never really explain how the duo learned their skills —which includes demolition, computer hacking, rope climbing and safe cracking — in such quick fashion.

There’s also a couple perfunctory subplots about police corruption and an obnoxious TV reporter (Kyra Sedgwick, given nothing to do) covering Nick’s threatened jump. Neither story line adds much to the main event: The battle of wills between Nick and Englander.

The movie wraps up with a truly laughable chase scene that will have you questioning the law of physics and whether the filmmakers really think audiences are that dumb to believe the sequence.