Vertical Limit
Editors note: I started writing this post on New Years’ Eve 2010. This will be the last entry for the year 2000. Keep checking for the next post, in which we’ll be boldly going into the world of 2001 cinema…
Year 2000 Trademarks:
- Features Chris O’Donnell’s last theatrical starring role to date
- Released on Superbit DVD
- Mountain Dew-esque extreme view of snow
I was born on the day after Christmas in 1984. I have no grudge about this. True, it meant a traditional birthday party was a non-option. December 26, after all, is the National day of recovering from the copious ham and alcohol consumption of the previous night. Moreover, mom and dad needed to decompress from the previous month of shopping, Mariah Carey music, visiting relatives and TNT’s godforsaken 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon, a programming gimmick that has single-handedly sucked every bit of joy from an otherwise classic film, as though Ted Turner needed to gobble up America’s yuletide memories to power his hyperbaric energy chamber, located in Atlanta eight stories below the World of Coca-Cola. But birthday parties at that point in my life terrified me anyway. Not the getting older part, of course (I was still counting the days until I turned 16 and the local comic shop would sell me a laser pointer). No, what scared me was giving my schoolmates, who even as pre-teens were well versed in repulsive yo’ momma jokes, eyewitness to my family. I was protective of my little after-school bubble of solace. Besides, Jesus had it worse than me. His birthday is actually on Christmas.
Instead of a party, my childhood birthday tradition went as follows: every year around 6pm my brothers and I would pile into the capped flatbet of our dad’s Toyota pickup truck and head to dinner at the Olive Garden, followed by a movie at the Galleria, in whose parking lot the Italian chain eatery was located. The food was salty and reliable and delicious (really, is there a better vegetable minestrone for less than 5 dollars?). But the quality of the movie portion? A lot more hit-or-miss. I wish I could say teenage Patrick had the refined cinematic sensibilities of a snob thrice his age. But the only people I was trying to impress were my overcaffinated, House of Pain-obsessed siblings. Thus the selections I made today look like the overzealous mistakes of a pre-teen drunk on Alfredo and complimentary bread that they were. Instead of Toy Story, for example, I asked my dad, if he’d please, to procure us five tickets to the :8:00 presentation of Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Pending a substantial critical re-appraisal of both films, I will admit this was the wrong choice.
How, you ask, is this lengthy and self-indulgent biography connected to with 2000’s Vertical Limit? The man-versus-mountain adventure had the dubious honor of being my 16th birthday selection. Was this tragically forettable movie another in my long line of bad birthday choices, or was I simply the most forward-thinking pre-teen in the Hudson Valley, seeing a potentical future classic between the explosions and icy fistfights? I’m not claiming there was any way in hell I would’ve chosen All the Pretty Horses or one of the other Oscar contenders on the marquee that day. But Dude, Where’s My Car? was right there for the watching.
Vertical Limit, it turns out, is not a bad movie – it just really wants to be. But mountain climbing, like boxing, is one of those activities that seem impervious to boring films. When they’re not bad they’re pretty good, and when they’re terrible they’re not bad. And when they’re great they lead to five sequels and Dolph Lundgren. Ask most people what they remember about Mission: Impossible II and they won’t talk about Ethan’s love triangle or the theft of Chimera. They’ll recall T.C.’s sick rock-climbing from the opening credits. This scene has absolutely nothing to do with the movie except giving Cruise a chance to show his shoulder muscles, and yet it’s that movie’s signature shot. Cliffhanger is a movie so full of bad choices its embodiment of evil is portrayed by the cherubic John Lithgow. It’s directed by Renny Harlin, who I’m certain would be cultural shorthand for big-budget hack if Michael Bay were to retire. But it’s an action classic thanks to a handful of gorgeous, vertigo scenes and the unbearable tension of fraying cords and bending carabiners.
Vertical Limit’s opening borrows heavily from both Cliffhanger’s and M:I-2’s, with the rock-climbing Garret siblings Peter and Annie cragging up a gorgeous desert formation, led by their expert father. A few equipment failures later and Peter is forced to tearfully cut his father loose in order to save his sister’s life. Petter and Annie dangling over vomit-inducing heights by a literal thread is undeniably tense, which is a relief, because you’re unlikely to go three minutes in Vertical Limit with some variation of this setup. Peter and Annie are played by Chris O’Donnel and Robin Tunney, which makes you feel like you’re watching a bizzare Reality Bites or Empire Records sequel in which mountain climbing has replaced documentary filmmaking as the hippest job for 20-somethings.
Cut to 10 years later: Annie, a renowned climber, is recruited for a risky expedition up K2 in the Himalayas, commissioned by the arrogant airline entrepreneur Eliot Vaughn. Vaughn is played with brilliant assholeishness by Bill Paxton. It is the kind of smarmy shithead type that Paxton does so well, but far too rarely. His Texas charm always lands him folksy everyman roles, but in scumbag mode that same charm is used against itself to magnificent effect. Paxton nearly stole the show from Arnold Schwarzenegger with his 10-minute cameo as a scumbag used car salesman in True Lies.
When the leader of Vaughn’s party (The X-Files’sNicholas Lea) demands they turn back before an approaching storm rolls in, Paxton munches on an energy bar and flashes a shit-eating grin. “What did you think,” he says, pointing to the summit, “she’d just lift up her skirt and pull her panties down for us?” Paxton, with his high-tech equipment and inability to feel what the mountain is saying is to Chris O’Donnell what Cary Elwes was to Paxton in Twister. Which is to say it’s best part.
As we all know, a lack of respect for Mother Earth is to a natural disaster movie what sex is to a slasher film. Mr. Vaughn’s huburis finds the climbers in the middle of an avalanche and stuck shivering at the bottom of a ravine. It’s up to Chris O’Donnell to save his sister from chilly doom. He assembles a rag-tag crew including a supermodel doctor, two alcoholic Brits, and an insultingly calm Pakistani. Leading the pack is a GRIZZLED-AS-SHIT Scott Glen. Glenn does admirably well in the role of an aging climber who spends his days searching the icy mountains for his lost wife. When he actually finds his wifesicle in the mountains, in fact, it’s only kind of hilarious:
What is Vertical Limit missing at this point? Not nitroglycerine. But that didn’t stop the filmmakers from adding it. Ascending the most dangerous terrain on planet Earth wasn’t EXTREME enough for this picture – oh hell no. O’Donnell and his team strap canisters of explosives onto their backs, turning each climber into a walking future action sequence. Compared to the authentic threat of the mountain, the nitro stuff feels like somebody snuck it in from a different movie when no one was paying attention. A worse movie. The only redeemable part of the nitro is that it leads to the film’s accidental funniest scene, in which a someone’s shoe explodes.
This leaves us with the most era-specific part of Vertical Limit : Chris O’Donnell. Vertical Limit marked O’Donnell’s last starring role in a feature film. He’s since gone on to a cozy role on CBS’s NCIS: Los Angeles, which according to most recent Nielsen numbers is watched by, roughly, all. But once upon a time he was 1996’s answer to Tobey Maguire. What happened? The vicissitudes of a fickle career in Hollywood are far to complex to boil down to a single word. But I will venture to boil it down to three: Batman & Robin (two words if you don’t include the ampersand).
I often hear George Clooney on Jay Leno or some other late night sofa make a self-deprecating comment about his involvement with 1997’s disastrous Batman and Robin, and while I find it refreshing he can laugh at himself now that a decade’s worth of brainy political thrillers and an Academy Award separates him from his latex-clad days, I wonder if his eye-rolling is not inadvertently flipping the bird to his co-stars Mr. O’Donnell (Robin) and Alicia Silverstone (Batgirl). Let’s face it, those two are truly bearing the albatross of the film. When Clooney encounters drunk fans, there are countless cultural touchstones he’s involved in besides the Caped Crusader. They’re just as likely to ask about ER. But if I ever stumble out of Planet Hollywood drunk on Demolition Man-themed margaritas and bump into Mr. O’Donnell, his stint as the Boy Wonder would be the first stupid thing to roll out of my mouth.
Mr. Shumacher’s movie didn’t just rob us of $8.50, but by hobbling two talented young stars in the formative part of their careers, may have altered the course of Hollywood AS WE KNOW IT. Kind of a reach, I know, but Silverstone’s and O’Donnell’s careers follow eerily similar trajectories: a breakout role in 1993 as a high school student (Clueless, Scent of a Woman), leading to a series of quirky romantic comedies (Excess Baggage, The Bachelor, Mad Love, Blast From the Past, et al.), only to be fatally sidetracked by the gaudy Carmela Soprano necklace that was Batman & Robin and enter an era of quiet — if admirable — supporting roles. All we can do now is wait for the current crop of young filmmakers who grew up on Clueless to write interesting roles for the two and spark Tarantino-esque career revivals.
Perhaps I knew, even at the ripe age of 16, that Vertical Limit would be my last chance to see Mr. O’Donnell at the helm of a blockbuster. And so, in solidarity, I chose that movie as my birthday present instead of my other option that 2000 weekend: Batman in the critically-acclaimed O Brother, Where Art Thou? Or maybe I just wanted to see Bill Paxton playing an asshole and Scott Glenn diving away from nitro explosions. Either way, it was the right choice.
