(Idris's Note - I was first introduced to rock climbing by my roommate Nathaniel
Morgan last January. NO SH*T, THERE I WAS, on my first day of climbing ever, and
some idiot forgot to tie onto his rope and ended up falling 30 feet!! As I was
putting on my climbing shoes, I looked up and noticed a guy traversing across
the ceiling. I also noticed the loose end of the rope that should have been
attached to his climbing harness was dangling about 3 feet back. Since I had
learned from Nate the night before that this harness should be tied with a
double figure-8 knot and double-checked by the belaying partner, I can only
assume that massive stupidity took place and that I was watching Darwinian
natural selection in real time. New to climbing but not new to stressful
situations, the thought running through my head was, "Hmm, that can't be
good. Well, as long as he doesn't panic, he can back up to the rope." Nate
was actually thinking something similar except his experienced thinking was
"He should traverse 2 feet to the right and pull himself up to safety from
the ledge." As we both thought about ways to recover, and literally as the
words '...as long as he doesn't panic...' popped into my head, the guy started
screaming for help and panicking. He eventually fell 30 feet from the ceiling
and the fall was broken by 6 guys at the bottom doing what Nate called a good
rescue catch. Falling Guy and his Stupid Partner were banned from the gym but
the incident apparently generated a lot of gossip for a few months.)
Vertical Limit is a wonderfully bad movie because its cast consists of
characters who would have panicked on the ceiling out of sheer cluelessness but,
at the same time, are supposed to make us believe that they are expert climbers.
It's not really their fault. Instead, we blame the unimaginative writer, Robert
King (not known for much). who was nice enough to make sure that the double
figure-8 knots used to secure their harnesses would mysteriously and randomly
come undone to create some unnecessary danger and action. That sort of thing
would send just about anybody, even an expert climber, into conniptions of panic
given enough occurrences.
Vertical limit begins somewhere on a rock surface somewhere in Southern Utah
where the Royce Garrett (Stuart Wilson) and his children, Peter (Chris
O'Donnell) and Annie (Robin Tunney) are having fun bonding while climbing and
playing Name That Tune. A freak accident happens where a couple of amateurs fall
off the surface above them and land on Royce. No less than six or more cams rip
out of the cracks (a rather amazing improbability), and now 5 climbers are
dangling from one cam which is happily and conveniently working its way out of
the crack that it has been wedged into. The last cam is attached to Annie
Garrett's harness and her adamantium body which withstood the shock of 4 grown
men falling and stopping and is now holding about 800 lbs of weight. After a bit
of gratuitous panicking, the two Newbie Climbing Lemmings fall to their deaths.
Of course, the cam is still merrily on its way out, cheerfully violating the
laws of physics. The way a cam works is by using two clamps that apply pressure
outwards proportional to the amount of weight hanging off of it. Thus, the more
downward force, the tighter the cam grips to the crack. Forgetting this Very
Important Climbing Equipment Fact, Royce dramatically tells his son Peter
(second in the chain of doom) to cut the rope, sacrificing himself so that Peter
and Annie can live - the rationale being that there's too much weight on the
rope. Peter does so and a second or so later, we see the results in a shot that
should not be remembered even in the Hall of Rather Mediocre Special Effects.
We now flash forward some years to the present where a rich CEO, Elliot Vaughn
(Bill Paxton) is making a second attempt to climb K2 - the serious rock
climber's Mount Everest. His idea is to be at the top when the flagship of his
newly formed airline passes overhead. Annie, now a world-famous rock climber is
the guide for this trip. Peter, a wildlife photographer, happens to be in the
area. The two have an uncomfortable meeting as Annie has never forgiven him for
cutting the rope that killed their father. Anyhow, to make a short story even
shorter, bad things happen on the way up, people die, Annie, Vaughan, and the
best climber in the world, Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea) end up trapped in a
crevice after an avalanche. A rescue team is formed by Peter and is lead by the
Crazy Old Man of the Mountain, Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn). Their plan is to
carry 3 canisters of really unstable, military grade nitroglycerine to that
location, blow open the chasm, and rescue the survivors.
From a climbing standpoint, the movie falls apart in a ridiculous fashion. First
the technical issues. Because the base camp is mysteriously and woefully
underequipped with rescue equipment, the characters are forced to go to the
military to get nitro up a mountain? What a great plot device! Who keeps
nitro lying around in old shacks these days? More to the point, which idiot in
any military would keep unstable and explosive stuff around in
sophisticated-looking containers with advanced triggering devices? That's
like loading musket balls into an assault rifle. Later we also find
out that the space age containers are also light sensitive and leaky. The nitro
is really only in the movie to kill off random characters and to inject
unnecessary excitement. As for the climbing, the movie continues to be terribly
silly and is filled with the same kind of technical inaccuracies that make
medical students giggle when they watch ER. Even if you don't know that much
about climbing, a little bit of high school physics will allow you to giggle
right along with the experts. For example, the movie trailer shows Peter
'GOING HUGE' over a chasm with two ice axes flailing to presumably find a hold
on the other side. Ice axes are used for scaling...well...ice. You hammer them
into ice, and then you wait for the ice to freeze around the axes before moving
up. Can they be used like Velcro strips for sticking onto an iceless rock
surface after jumping and falling more than 50 feet? King seem to think so. The
magical ice axe figures in another scene where one has been hammered into ice to
provide an anchor for the rescue rope. In all aspects of the rescue, from the
ropes to the body positions, the rescuers are violating crevasse rescue
techniques. So when we say, don't do this at home, we really mean it. Bad
technique notwithstanding, thanks to the writer or director or both, the ice axe
then experiences some anti-Newtonian forces and works its way out of the
ice, perpendicular to the downward force being applied to it, almost as if
someone was pushing the ice axe from below...maybe King himself.
With a little more effort, the director and writer could have made a good
climbing movie with realistic reversals that would have been a lot more
interesting to watch. Climbers tell fantastic stories (which all begin with the
phrase "NO SH*T, THERE I WAS...") about real moments of
life-threatening danger and desperate split-second decisions. Another phrase
that gets used often is "GO HUGE OR GO HOME" normally used in the
middle of a story as in "We had no other options but to GO HUGE OR GO HOME,
so we decided to take a running jump at the ledge." It would have added a
bit of humor (for climbers, at least) if prior to making his miraculous jump
with the +5 Ice Axes of Velcro, Peter muttered, "Go Huge or Go Home."
Any of these details could have been uncovered by a little research or by
talking to the many expert climbers that they had on staff (especially Ed
Viesters) and worked into a movie that would be tense, exciting, realistic, and
free of generic plot gimmicks.
We give Vertical Limit a 5 out of 10 on the Good Movie scale and an 8 out of 10
on the Bad Movie scale. It does have some good moments of tension and excitement
and there are some nice climbing and scenic moments. For most of us, this is
also as close as we're going to get to seeing K2, especially given the current
political instability of the region. Otherwise the plot is laughable and there
are some very predictable reversals in the story. Vertical Limit's out on video
and HBO now and probably worth seeing for free or at something less than
Blockbuster rental prices.
Our Drive-In
Totals:
2 dead bodies
10 presumed-dead bodies
0 breasts
1 broken rope
1 broken finger
1 broken leg
1 Token Love Interest with French days and Canadian days
A 6-cam failure
High altitude nude sunbathing
1 Adamantium Body
1 Silly Helicopter Exit Situation
1 Unnecessary but Photogenic 'Rolling Traversal'
1 Unnecessary but Photogenic 'Going Huge Over Chasm' moment
1 Non-textbook Crevice Rescue
1 Exploding Shoe
1 Exploding Equipment Shack
1 Bloody Flare
2 Dickensian Coincidence Plot Devices
2 Snow Leopards
Splitting the Party
Non-Newtonian Ice Axes
Highest Party In The World
1 Evil Corporate Bastard
2 Newbie Lemmings
2 Unnecessary Explosions
A questionable 4 for 1 payoff
Buddhist Revenge
Kung Fu
Knife Fu
Rock Fu
Axe Fu
Ice Fu
Syringe Fu
Snow Fu
Edema Fu
Nitro Fu
Rotor Fu
Avalanche Fu
Cold Fu
Rope Fu
Ground Fu
Good Movie Scale: 5 out of 10
Bad Movie Scale: 8 out of 10
