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Vertical limit

Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

An emotionally-charged action adventure story, Vertical limit is a high adrenaline tale of Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell), a young climber who becomes estranged from his sister, Annie (Robin Tunney) and retires from the sport after they are involved in the tragic death of their father (Stuart Wilson as Boyce) in a climbing accident.

Three years later, when his sister and other members of her summit team become trapped on K2, the second highest mountain in the world, he must go back into action and mount an extraordinary rescue effort in a race against time to save them.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film thriller mountain climbing family

Persons of interest

Chris O'Donnell .... Peter Garrett
Robin Tunney .... Annie
Stuart Wilson .... Boyce
Bill Paxton .... Elliott Vaughn
Scott Glenn .... Montgomery Wick
Izabella Scorupco .... Monique Aubertine
Temuera Morrison .... Major Rasul
Augie Davis .... Aziz
Steve Le Marquand .... Cyril Bench
Ben Mendelsohn .... Malcolm Bench
Nicholas Lea .... Tom McLaren
Roshan Seth .... Colonel Amir Salim
Alejandro Valdes-Rochin .... Sergeant Asim
Rod Brown .... Ali Hasan
Alexander Siddig .... Kareem Nazir
Terry Hayes .... Screenwriter
Martin Campbell .... Screenwriter
Martin Campbell .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Vertical limit official movie site
Studios and distributors:

Sony Pictures Releasing

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Climb ev'ry cliché, ford ev'ry scream...

You know how I am when the clichés start hitting the fan: I don't duck and cover, I don't roll with the blows, I stand up and get myself counted. Vertical limit isn't a bad script in search of a budget, it's just that there is only one story you can write about mountains: climbing up them and then climbing back down. The big questions are as follows:

Why? ("Because it's there" is invalid because it's already been used on a real mountain)
Which mountain will they be climbing?
Which band of mis-matched larrikins will you include?
Who will be the wise elder who is in tune with the mystifying moods of the mountain?
Who will be the wildcat who ignores the rules and still manages to survive longer than most?
Who will fall off on the way up?
Who will get to the top?
What tragedy will befall the climbing party?
Who will fall off on the way down?
Who will need to be rescued?
Who will fall in love?

The answers in this case are:

To make fun of Richard Branson.
K2 (next door to Everest in the Himalayas).
Team 1: rich bastard, nice girl, weak leader, token local ethnic - Team 2: hero, supermodel love interest with talent and humour who loves the outdoors, mystical elder who knows the mountain better than anyone else, Aussie larrikins, token local ethnic's brother.
Montgomery Wick, whose wife died on the mountain, where he remains, searching for her remains.
Aussie larrikins
Too few people.
No-one.
Bad weather.
Aussie larrikin.
Rich bastard, nice girl, weak leader & token ethnic.
Hero and supermodel love interest with talent and humour who loves the outdoors.

Anything worth seeing? Yes: the stunts are cool (although you saw most of them in the trailer), the humour is rough and ready and the scenery is nice to look at, as are the actors (what happened to all the ugly people in Hollywood?). Michael, a man with a taste for climbing up rocks, said that it was crap, but don't let that put you off because he thinks too much. Vertical limit is not the thinking person's movie.

Media intelligence (DVD)

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Disc type: single side, dual layer
Picture: Widescreen (16:9 enhanced)
Languages: English, Hungarian
Subtitles: English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Dutch, Bulgarian, Hindi, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Arabic
Audio commentary
24 minute making of Featurette
8 Featurettes: