USA: PREMIERE OF ACTION MOVIE "VERTICAL LIMIT" STARRING CHRIS O'DONNELL, SCOTT GLENN AND ROBIN TUNNEY

Record ID: 788068

  • Title: USA: PREMIERE OF ACTION MOVIE "VERTICAL LIMIT" STARRING CHRIS O'DONNELL, SCOTT GLENN AND ROBIN TUNNEY
  • Date: 7th December 2000
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) IZABELLA SCORUPCO SAYING: "Flying, like flying helicopters, was kind of scary. I mean, I have to say, I think helicopters are the sexiest machines out there because it's so powerful (MIMICS THE ROTOR SOUND OF HELICOPTER). I mean, it's just so cool, but at the same time, together with all these other actors, and something is weird. You feel like, oh my god, did you hear that. Everybody is looking at each other, oh are we going to die, and things like that. It was an everyday thing for us, we were just so close to tragedy we thought."
  • Embargoed: 22nd December 2000 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, US AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVACMIGE0O8W6574H36WLDRMMXC3
  • Story Text: "Vertical Limit" is a high-altitude thriller spiked with action scenes and perilous moments and stars Chris O'Donnell, Scott Glenn and Robin Tunney as members of a climbing team facing overwhelming odds in their ascent of the Himalayan peak K2.
    Once again proving his skill with straightforward, physical filmmaking (previously demonstrated in ``GoldenEye'' and ``The Mask of Zorro''), director Martin Campbell engages the movie-goer in sequences that demand inventive visual solutions for the staging of intensely dangerous situations.
    On the sheer red cliff of a towering butte in Monument Valley, brother and sister Peter and Annie Garrett (Chris O'Donnell, Robin Tunney) are doing some technical climbing with their expert climber dad, Royce (Stuart Wilson). In a horrible accident, they get tangled up with two other mountaineers, leaving five adults dangling from a single rope.
    The two strangers quickly plummet to their deaths and, after a few moments of gasping indecision, Royce warns that the line won't hold long and demands that his son cut him loose to have any hope of saving himself and his sister. Faced with this impossible but urgent dilemma and ignoring Annie's hysterical protests, Peter obeys his father.
    Three years later, Peter is a National Geographic photographer, shooting snow leopards in the Himalayas. In short order, heup at a Pakistani military installation, where some very big guns point straight toward India, and then at a K2 base camp, where he has a delicate reunion with Annie.
    In the intervening period since their father's death, Peter has abandoned mountaineering, while Annie has become a hotshot climber and Sports Illustrated cover girl whose current gig has her accompanying billionaire entrepreneur Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton) on a rapid ascent of K2.
    Setting up a luxurious compound , the arrogantly confident Elliot has surrounded himself with the best team that his limitless money can buy, including expert climber Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea), who is supposed to lead Elliot to the summit of the world's second-highest peak in time to coincide with a fly-over of a plane from Elliot's new airline. His commercial motive for the climb makes the businessman the nominal villain, a status further amplified by the selfish way he treats his colleagues when the crises commence.
    At 26,000 feet when severe weather hits, Elliot, Annie and Tom end up inside a deep cavern that shortly becomes sealed by an avalanche. With just 36 hours until his sister and the men will certainly expire, a galvanized Peter takes charge of the rescue attempt, quickly assembling a team of diverse and sometimes strange characters who stand only an outside chance of reaching the reckless climbers.
    The crew includes the supermodel-like medic and climber Monique (Izabella Scorupco), upright Pakistani porter Kareem (Alexander Siddig), wild Aussie hippie brothers Cyril and Malcolm Bench (Steve Le Marquand, Ben Mendelsohn) and hard to figure out hardcase Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn), a long-ago friend of Peter and Annie's father who's been a mountain recluse since his wife died in an incident that gives him a secret personal agenda against Elliot.
    Not only does this ill-assorted bunch have to rush up what may be the world's most perilous mountain, but must do so carrying canisters of nitroglycerin, which will enable the rescuers to blast through to the snow and rock that enshroud the trio. Just the slightest undue jostling or contact will make nitro blow.
    This narrative back story ratchets up the tension and puts across scenes of intense peril and imminent death with visceral impact. First of these has a helicopter taking the six crew members up as high as it can to a cliffside drop-off at which the climbers, each packing nitro, must jump clear while the chopper lurches dangerously about in the thin air.
    This is nothing, however, compared with the next action sequence, which contains what may be the shot of the year: As Cyril slides helplessly down a severe slope, the camera descends at breathtaking speed with him at ground level, then continues way out over a yawning gorge as Cyril just manages to hook his pickax into the ice, leaving him dangling from the edge with only the faintest hope that Monique might be able to rescue him.
    Many of the toughest scenes were accomplished with an assist from blue-screen shooting, traveling mattes, models, soundstage work and computerized visual effects, the film has a predominantly real look and feel. Working on Southern Alps locations in New Zealand allowed the filmmakers to convincingly match mountain vistas shot in the Himalayas.
    "Vertical Limit" opnes in North America on December 8.
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