Movie Review - Man On A Ledge

This is a movie about, well, about a man on a ledge. Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, a cop unjustly convicted of a crime. He's been sentenced to 25 years in jail, and as you might imagine, especially since he's an ex-cop, it is not pleasant. He concocts an incredibly complicated scheme to prove his innocence. Elizabeth Banks plays Lydia Mercer, police negotiator. Cassidy, from his perch 21 floors above New York City, demands that Mercer be brought in to talk to him. He figures that she will be especially motivated since her last jumper, actually jumped.

There is a lot of suspense, especially early on when we don't really know what's going on. The ledge scenes are pretty intense and were apparently actually filmed on a ledge high above the street. No actors were harmed in the making of this movie.

Ed Harris plays millionaire developer, jewelery store owner and bad guy. He's apparently somehow responsible for Cassidy going down (I mean to prison, not off the ledge). Harris has menacing growlyness down to a science and he pulls it off pretty well here.

The story develops well, easily moving from suspense (will he jump or not?) to exposition (why is his brother and his brother's girlfriend on the roof of a building across the street?) and back again.

My only real beef with the movie is the unbelievableness of the the scheme. Not only is it complicated but they seem to have thought of almost every thing that could go wrong. On top of that, it must have been expensive to have pulled off. How did Nick's family afford to do this? All that being said, the story moves along fast enough that you don't really think about these questions until after the movie is over. By then, such quibbles seem like, well, quibbles.