Man on a Ledge

In this suspense film, Sam Worthington plays police officer Nick, currently serving a sentence for stealing a diamond he was hired to protect, for wealthy businessman Englander (Ed Harris). Nick claims he was framed by Englander, who kept the diamond for himself and collected the insurance. Nick breaks out of police custoday and goes out to a ledge on a hotel, asking for a negotiator known for her last botched attempt to bring another cop in from a suicide, Lydia (Elizabeth Banks). Nick claims to be doing this to bring attention to his innocence, and at first the film audience is led to believe this too.


Soon we see this is a stunt by Nick and his brother Joey (Jaime Bell) to break into Englander's stronghold to steal the diamond, to prove his innocence by showing the diamond is still in Englander's possession. Lydia, not knowing this, tries at first to convince Nick to end his so called suicide attempt, but later feels something is wrong and tries to piece things together.

Other characters are Ed Burns as Lydia's associate; Anthony Mackie as Nick's police friend; Genesis Rodriguez as oey's girlfriend who is also part of the heist; Titus Welliver as another police guy in charge; and Kyra Sedgwick as a news reporter on the scene.

I don't think they balanced the humor at the beginning part of the film with the drama (Kyra's idiotic reporter gives real reporters a bad name) as the beginning was played pretty straight and serious. The people on the ground watching it all scream at Nick to jump, what kind of people do that? I was thinking it would have been better to frame this movie as a comedy instead, much like the recent Tower Heist, which had lots of comedy but some drama, and overall a more balanced and fun film.

Banks' negotiator comes off as not wanting to be bothered with this job instead of being fearful to fail again so I don't think she did a good enough job. She needs to come off as tough enough to handle this type of work, as well as sensitive to the people she is trying to help, and Banks' performance is neither. I would have preferred Ed Burns in this role or even Anthony Mackie. If they were trying to shoehorn a female character into the story they should have picked someone with a more convincing persona. Although Bell's American accent was very good, Worthington as the lead starts out with an okay American accent but for most of the film it is sloppy and sounds a lot more Australian.

As I said the brother and girlfriend perform the heist while Nick is on the ledge. They do things like rappeling down a wall, thinking on their feet, breaking into a safe, etc. and there is no explanation of how they have learned to do these things (although there is planning and coaching having been done by Nick). Also, even though everything is planned to the minute, stupidly the girlfriend changes into a sleek bodysuit in the middle of the heist so she can move stealthily in a ventilation shaft--seriously, she couldn't have done this beforehand? Of course it gives male audience members the opportunity to see her in her underwear. This duo did give some humor further into the story that was less caustic than the Kyra Sedgwick character, as by this time you already knew what the real story was.