Stars: Chris O'Donnell, Bill Paxton, Robin Tunney, Scott Glenn, Temuera Morrison, Stuart Wilson

Director: Martin Campbell

Summary: The story of Peter Garrett, a young climber, who leads a rescue attempt up K2, the second highest peak in the world. He battles against all the elements and harsh conditions to try to save his sister and her team trapped at the summit.

As action director Martin Campbell's heart-pumping thriller VERTICAL LIMIT begins, an eagle glides gracefully over the stunningly filmed mesas of Utah. Its shadow falls on a vertical rock face being climbed by Peter Garrett (Chris O'Donnell), his father (Stuart Wilson), and his sister Annie (Robin Tunney). Suddenly a backpack hurtles by, followed rapidly by two climbers whose ropes tear the male Garretts from the rock face. The excruciatingly tense sequence ends in tragedy.
After this stunning opening, the action switches to the Himalayas, where tycoon Elliott Vaughn (Bill Paxton) has financed an expedition that will take him to the summit of K2--the world's second highest mountain. Annie is one of Elliott's party. In the face of a threatening storm, Elliott recklessly insists the climb should continue. The storm duly arrives and decimates the expedition, leaving Elliott and Annie stranded. Peter leads a group of climbers--including the grizzled Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn) and a French-Canadian nurse (Izabella Scorupco)--in a rescue attempt.
Campbell, director of photography Derek Tattersall, many daring cameramen, mountain climbers, avalanche specialists, and special effects technicians, along with veteran editor Thom Noble, deliver a beautifully filmed mountaineering thriller with even more heart-stopping moments than JAWS.

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Vertical Limitis the film for all those mountain-climbing aficionados who devoured Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Airand similar books. It attempts to translate man-against-the-mountain adventure into compelling, albeit fictional, drama. But while the climbing action is pretty darn breathtaking, somebody forgot to put the brakes on the cliché machine while penning the screenplay. Two siblings (Chris O'Donnell and Robin Tunney) are mentally scarred by a climbing accident in which their father died to save them. She becomes a famous mountain climber; he never climbs again. On one of her climbs an avalanche leaves her stranded and only her determined brother can bring her back, along with a ragtag team of rescuers. It's easy to pick out the rest of the story from here, but Vertical Limitis less about the hackneyed plot than it is about putting its characters into increasingly dangerous situations and hanging them precariously over various mountainsides. It's a credit to director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye) that the impressive action keeps the film moving along past the bordering-on-absurd plot twists. O'Donnell tosses his mane of fluffy hair admirably, but it's still disheartening to see this once-promising actor turning into a pretty-boy stand-in; only Glenn manages to overcome his character's predictability. Mountaineering enthusiasts will recognise a cameo by world-renowned climber Ed Viesturs, who as an actor proves that he's... a very good mountain climber. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Animated Menus, Trailer, Filmographies, Weblink, National Geographical Featurette, Seven Search And Rescue Featurettes, Making Of Featurette, Feature Length Commentary From The Director And Executive Producer
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	2000
Release Date:	June 6, 2005
Runtime:	119 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C 823 500 1
Keywords:	Action, General, Limit, Adventure, Vertical
Genre:	Action/Adventure