Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Michael Ledo Sam Worthington is convicted of a crime he claims he did not commit. He goes out on the ledge of a building, in what we know early on is a diversionary tactic as he conspires with his brother (Jamie Bell) to prove his innocence. He requests Lydia "Grim Reaper" Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) to be the person to talk him down. By the nickname, her track record of talking people down has been less than desirable. She is hungry to save someone while fighting her hangover.The film uses a good intense sound track to raise the thriller level as Jamie and his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) attempt to prove Worthington is innocent.Good intensity. Minor expected twists.F-bomb, no sex, no nudity, Genesis Rodriguez in bra/panties.

CANpatbuck3664 *Minor Spoilers Ahead* A relatively young man enters a nice hotel and checks in. He orders breakfast, tips the doorman, scribbles some notes down on a napkin and then decides to step out onto the ledge. He is quickly spotted by someone on the ground and the cops arrive. When they make their way up Jack Dougherty (Ed Burns) is initially in charge of the scene. He sticks his head out the window to initiate the negotiation but the man refuses to calm down or leave the ledge but he specifically asks for Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) and he won't talk to anyone else. Why would he do that? Who is this man? Is this a serious suicide attempt or is something else the endgame here? The critics of this film have said that the film is just too hopelessly stupid and has too many plot holes to overcome mediocrity. The defenders of this film have insisted that this is a B movie thriller and it hits the mark that it's trying to achieve. Nobody is claiming this to be an Oscar calibre picture. I'll get the negatives out of the way first. The real weakness of this movie is the fact that the heist is so implausible and one can find the holes just by glancing too long at it. Angie and Joey's professions are never divulged but they are able to come up with solutions on the spot that secret agents would have trouble with. These are supposed to be blue collar people! I'm sorry but Man on a Ledge hearkens back to Tower Heist on being just a little too slack when the heist is going down. This security system that is guarding the David's stuff would be way too advanced for an ex-cop and a couple of rookie thieves to bypass. There are other points where the plot strains plausibility. The fact that Nick gets clipped by a train and walks away without even a concussion is straight bull. The cast that has been assembled here is mainly of a bunch of actors I like, so with that in my mind, it was one of the factors that intrigued me about the movie. Starting with our protagonist, Sam Worthington gets a lot of grief as an actor. I don't think he's a really good one but he does possess a certain charm and screen presence. I thought he did a pretty good job here, he sells a lot of the film's bad dialogue and I thought there was some pretty decent bantering between him and Elizabeth Banks. He's not the type of star that would raise the grade on this movie despite its flaws but he's solid enough. The better performances came from the cops. I think Elizabeth Banks is extremely underrated as both a comedic and dramatic actress but I thought she was the best performer here. She holds her accent and she's actually compelling here as the hostage negotiator. I thought Anthony Mackie is good but he's totally undercut by a crappy plot twist. At the start of the movie, he's extremely likable and it just made me sad when he turns on a dime near the climax. I would also credit Jaime Bell specifically, he's the more interesting of the bandits and he helps bring the humour to a movie that desperately needed some at points. Ed Harris was probably the actor I liked the least. He's playing a heartless billionaire but he's not interesting. He's just a $#!&. There's no dimension to him as a character and even though I think Ed Harris is a good actor he certainly didn't help here. Genesis Rodriguez was weak in this movie. She's playing to stereotypes too hard, they don't give her enough to work with and there doesn't seem to be much to her outside of that. If there was anything else that I can credit the movie for, after the first 30 minutes the movie paced pretty well. It moves along briskly and it's got some pretty solid camera work. Even though I was tripping over the plot holes and some of the bad dialogue, it moved quickly enough and that it kept me interested as it came to its conclusion. I was in a pretty good mood when I watched this but when I try to compare it to other movies though, this is still head and shoulders above Tower Heist. The film manages to coast by on its premise, some decent acting, a quick pace and solid camera work. It has its problems but I would agree that this is an expensive B movie that isn't aiming to be a classic like an Ocean's Eleven. It set its sights much lower and if you can look past the big pile of stupid that sits right in front of it, you could have a good time watching it. It just barely got past the finish line though.

juneebuggy I liked this movie and was kinda surprised by all the bad reviews. I think what I liked the most was that this was a different sort of story than I'd seen before, at least in the first 40 minutes.Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy a cop turned fugitive threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel rooftop. As an NYPD psychologist works to talk him down she learns that he may have a hidden motive for taking his own life as the biggest diamond heist ever committed is in motion and things aren't what they seem.I'm one of those people who enjoys a movie where you have to figure stuff out and initially this is a huge guessing game as you have no clear idea what is going on or why 'Nick' is doing what he's doing. His story is slowly revealed and unfortunately this gets very clichéd the further along we go, including a super happy ending that was a bit much. Jamie Bell plays his brother and (as per) is excellent, getting the N.Y accent perfect which I can"t say for Worthington who struggled with his. A fun original thrill ride with great secondary characters including Ed Harris. 9/15/14

wildandcrazygal The movie was okay for most of it, then it took a turn. I'm so sick of modern writers. They write a character who is supposedly so smart that he can outsmart everybody and get the diamond, but not smart enough to realize that giving the diamond back means nothing, they're all dead anyway because men like that don't let people live. Lazy writing makes me want to find out where the writers live, fly, take a train, or whatever how many days it takes to get there, go to their house, knock on their door and punch the writers in the face when they answer the door for being lazy, inept idots using lame plot devices and not staying true to characters they spent time building and wasting our time with drivel. The characters spend all this time getting the diamond to prove his innocence but they have no end game. Seriously, they didn't plan this out. I'm no writer but just off the top of my head in thirty seconds I can come up with they could have had cameras with them broadcasting live to the internet when he returned to his office with the diamond proving he had it all along. They could have used their guns to walk him down to the street and make him reveal on camera to the hundreds of people waiting and the news crews that he had it all along. I'm not even a writer and I came up with two way more plausible outcomes than the hacks who wrote this did and I did it in seconds. You would suppose they had months to write it but the best they could come up with for a man they wrote as so intelligent that he could outsmart everyone, get out of prison, recover the diamond, set off an explosion while nobody notices, keep the public eye on him the whole time, he's that brilliant, but so they can have an action scene, they suddenly write this character they've portrayed as so bloody brilliant as the stupidest moron on earth with no exit plan. The hacks who wrote this should never get another job.