Free Fall

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

It starts out great: a father and his two grown children, Peter (Chris O'Donnell) and Annie (Robin Tunney), are on a practice climb in what appears to be Monument Valley. An accident occurs, and the three of them are dangling from a rope that can only hold two. Someone has to be cut loose. This turns out to be the father, and it is his son who wields the knife that sends him into deadly free fall.

All right, the sequence is a cliche. But it is well executed by director Martin Campbell (The Mark of Zorro). Thereafter, though, Vertical Limit consists mainly of variations on a theme. If your tolerance for seeing lots of people hanging by their fingertips from icy cliffs is high, you may enjoy the film. On the other hand, when its principals are not so engaged, they are talking through painfully obvious moral dilemmas stated with laughable earnestness in the overwrought script by Robert King and Terry Hayes.

Peter, rather sensibly, quits climbing and takes up nature photography. Annie, however, joins forces with an egomaniacal mogul (Bill Paxton) for an assault on K2, said to be the world's toughest mountain to master. His inner skankiness comes out when they fall into a snow cave and have to be rescued before succumbing to altitude sickness.

Guess whose brother just happens to be in the Himalayan neighborhood, eager to save the sister who has not forgiven him for Dad's death? Now try to guess why Scott Glenn signed on to play the shaggy, half-mad old man of the mountains honchoing the rescue. It is the year's most ludicrous character part in what is likely the year's most ludicrous action movie.

--By Richard Schickel