Man on a Ledge is a Die Hard-type of suspense film. The action is non-stop, the acting is good and there is no need to carp about the lack of absolute logic. In other words this is a movie to go to see to be entertained without stressing out over the little things. Sam Worthington leads a strong cast in a tale about a man wrongly convicted of a crime who fights to clear his name.
The film starts with Nick Cassidy (Worthington) going to a downtown hotel in New York and taking a room on the twenty-first floor. He orders a lobster dinner with champagne and then writes a suicide note. After cleaning his fingerprints from the room he climbs out on to the ledge and stands there. He is noticed almost immediately from the street and chaos ensues.
The police arrive in the person of Jack Dougherty (Edward Burns). He tries to talk Nick back into the room but Nick refuses and demands that Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) be brought in as the negotiator. If she is not put in charge he will jump. And it goes from there.
The pace of the movie never lessens. Nick is an escaped felon who claims he is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. There are people who don't want to see him come in off the ledge. For them it would be best if he jumped, So there are a lot of conflicting forces in the film and you never know who the good guy is and who is the bad.
Worthington is solid as Nick while Banks steals the show as Mercer. Even amid the tension of the plot and the ensuing activities Worthington and Banks make a connection with their characters. Now that takes some good acting.
In supporting roles, Jamie Bell is believable as Nick's angry brother, Joey. Genesis Rodriguez provides some comic relief as Joey's girlfriend Angie. Titus Welliver is edgy as the tense Police Captain Dante, and Ed Harris is evil as a wealthy jeweler. Kyra Sedgwick makes a cameo appearance as a TV news reporter.
The movie is rated PG-13 for profanity & violence.
There are flaws in the script but they are not big ones. The main plot line plays out with logic. At the end of the movie I was tempted to sit through it again, and when was the last time you felt that way about a movie? It is just a movie to be savored with a bag of popcorn and a drink, and someone to enjoy the whole thing with you.
After the bombardment of "artistic" movies we have seen in the past month or so it is nice to have a movie that just simply entertains. That is exactly what Man on a Ledge does, and does it with success.
I scored Man on a Ledge a heightened 7 out of 10.