December 10, 2000 -- "Vertical Limit" is a big, over-the-top adventure movie about the dangers of mountain climbing at extreme elevations, where the air is very thin, the weather dangerous, and people get really crabby. The adventure is so extreme, in fact, that it is ridiculous, but it is fun to watch.

The action takes place atop one of the most dangerous places in the world, the towering, menacing peak known by the cryptic name K2. It is located in the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world, but that's not enough danger for the screenwriter, Robert King. Just for fun King throws in a war, unstable explosives, a killer, a man seeking vengeance, death-defying stunts, avalanches, storms, a wobbly helicopter and several tons of emotional baggage. There was so much extreme action in the film, I found myself laughing at it. You can't possibly take it seriously, but you can sure have fun with it.

The story centers around Peter Garrett (well played by Chris O'Donnell of "Cookie's Fortune") and his sister, Annie (Robin Tunney of "End of Days"). Their shared emotional baggage goes back to a tragic climbing accident in which their father was killed. Peter was forced to cut the rope holding his father before all three fell to their deaths. Annie can't forgive him.

Years later, Peter must rescue Annie from K2, where she is trapped in a crevasse with part of her climbing party. The climb is headed by the wealthy Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton of "A Simple Plan") and expert climber Tom McLaren (played by Nicholas Lea, better known as Alex Krycek on "The X-Files"). The McLaren character is based on real-life climber Ed Viesturs, who also appears in the film under his own name.

Peter puts a rescue team together from volunteers, including the enigmatic Montgomery Wick (played by Scott Glenn of "Courage Under Fire"), a Pakistani named Kareem (Alexander Siddig of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," AKA, Siddig El Fadil) and Monique Aubertine (Izabella Scorupco of "GoldenEye"). Not only do they have to climb rapidly to find the trapped climbers before they die of exposure, they have to climb with nitroglycerin strapped to their backs. Nitroglycerin is a notoriously unstable explosive. The idea is to blow the stranded climbers right off the mountain, it seems. Anyway, it adds more excitement to an already ridiculously dangerous situation.

There are plenty of explosions in the movie, more than are really necessary, but the philosophy here is clearly that more is better than enough. We also have the obligatory movie cliché where a character demonstrates the explosive power of a small amount of nitroglycerin so you get the idea it is, indeed, explosive. Of course hauling nitroglycerin around is, in itself, a movie cliché, pioneered in movies like "The Wages of Fear" and "Sorcerer" Meanwhile, the trapped climbers are hanging on, using Dexamethasone (or “Dex,” as it is referred to in the movie). An injection of Dex can temporarily treat altitude sickness. The term vertical limit, by the way, is the altitude at which the body begins to succumb to altitude sickness.

There's an incredible stunt where a guy jumps across an impossibly wide chasm, falling what seems like a hundred feet down before clinging to the far side of the chasm like a fly on a wall. However, the scene from the movie trailer, seen from a distance, seems more spectacular than the way the same stunt is shown up close in the movie. The climbing sequences are spectacular, and so is the scenery, filmed at Mt. Cook in the Southern Alps in New Zealand, some 14,000 feet lower than the relevant elevations of K2.

The characters also have all this high-powered guilt and revenge with them on the trip. I guess I didn't mind that so much because it did not get in the way of the action, but it was all so overblown I couldn't take it seriously. The acting is effective in the film. Glenn, especially, is convincing as the tough-as-nails veteran climber. There was some humor in the movie to break the tension, but I could have used a lot more. Kudos to stunt coordinator Simon Crane and his crew, to cinematographer David Tattersall for getting some great shots under what must have been very difficult conditions, to film editor Thom Noble and to director Martin Campbell ("The Mask of Zorro"). This is a good adventure movie, even though it was so outlandish it probably ought to have been more of a comedy than a drama. It rates a B.

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